Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) continued to draw the scorn of House Republicans on Friday when Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) fumed that Senate conservatives have “bullied” and “abused” their counterparts in the lower chamber throughout the push to defund Obamacare.
Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Duffy once again hammered the likes of Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) for acknowledging earlier this week that a continuing resolution (CR) that defunds the health care law is probably doomed in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said that the House will pass a CR on Friday that cuts funding to Obamacare, effectively placing the onus on Cruz and his allies in the Senate.
“All summer long as these ads have been running, as they’ve been holding town halls and raising money, we’ve kept a lid on our anger in the House as we were the punching bag and bullied by some of these Senate conservatives,” Duffy said. “And so now with the CR vote that’s gonna come today we are gonna give them exactly what they’ve asked for — the opportunity to fight in the Senate on defunding Obamacare. And you saw us explode with anger publicly when they stood up and started waving the white flag saying, ‘Listen, we’re not gonna fight here, we’re gonna surrender, we can’t win.'”
Duffy told host Joe Scarborough that House Republicans were steamed at Cruz this week.
“I have to tell you what, you should have been on the floor back in the cloakroom. There was so much anger, so much frustration because, again, we’ve been abused by these guys for long,” Duffy said. “What I see happening now is people coming out and calling them out for the hypocrisy of these big, tough conservatives who know how to fight but will never get in the ring.”
“They can hold a filibuster in the Senate if they want but they can’t hold the Senate conservatives together and they keep trying to put this fight in the house,” he continued. “They can hold the Senate and have this fight as long as they want but they’re not willing to do it.”
Cruz suggested Thursday that he may mount a talking filibuster to prevent Obamacare from being funded.
