Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) took a veiled shot at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Monday, urging the GOP not to “disparage fellow Republicans as not being sufficiently Reaganesque.”
The junior senator from Texas drew criticism from John McCain and Bob Dole this weekend after suggesting they ran for president without principle.
“Of course, all of us remember President Dole and President McCain and President Romney,” he said at CPAC. “Now look those are good men, they’re decent men. But when you don’t stand and draw a clear distinction, when you don’t stand for principle, Democrats celebrate.”
Without naming Cruz, Paul noted in a post published on Breitbart that too often members of his party make Ronald Reagan “into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes.”
Reagan also “believed in diplomacy and demonstrated a reasoned approach to our nuclear negotiations with the Soviets,” Paul said, drawing parallels to the situation in Ukraine.
“I don’t claim to be the next Ronald Reagan nor do I attempt to disparage fellow Republicans as not being sufficiently Reaganesque,” Paul added. “But I will remind anyone who thinks we will win elections by trashing previous Republican nominees or holding oneself out as some paragon in the mold of Reagan, that splintering the party is not the route to victory.”
McCain is calling on Cruz to apologize for his remarks about Dole. The 1996 GOP presidential nominee also told CNN that “Cruz needs to check the record before passing judgment.”
