Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Sunday denied that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is a leading face in the conservative movement and said the Texas senator hurt the party in his effort to defund Obamacare.
Asked on NBC’s “Meet The Press” whether Cruz did more harm than good in risking a government shutdown to derail the health care law, the former Pennsylvania senator said that although Cruz’s goal was admirable he did do some damage.
“I would say that in the end, he did more harm,” Santorum said. “I think it was not his objective. I think his objective was a laudable one, I think he didn’t do a very good job in planning it out. I mean it’s one thing to have a goal, and another thing to have a plan to get you to that goal.”
Santorum added that part of the Republican Party’s problem is that it has no definitive leader at this point in time, unlike the Democratic Party, which has a leader in President Barack Obama.
“But that’s always the way it is with a party out of power,” he said. “You have lots of different faces and those faces, as we’ve seen, they come and they go.”
During an appearance in Iowa on Friday, Cruz laid the blame for the defund Obamacare effort’s failure squarely on the shoulders of Senate Republicans who did not stand behind the House GOP during the government shutdown.
Watch below, courtesy of NBC News:
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