Sen. Ted Cruz needlessly dragged Republicans "across broken glass" in his quest to defund the Affordable Care Act and should apologize for pushing an impossible task, says Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform.
"Ted Cruz and the people around him said that anyone who didn't follow his direction on this was a Nazi appeaser … if you didn't take his tactic, you owned Obamacare," Norquist told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
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"Ted Cruz hurled invective and nasty stuff at every single Republican who had a track record longer than Ted Cruz's of opposing Obamacare and voting against it … they were RINOs [Republicans in name only] if they didn't like his tactic."
That tactic — last month's 21-hour filibuster-style marathon speech before the U.S. Senate — was a losing "non-strategy," according to Norquist.
"No one's questioning his conservative credentials. It's his wisdom and his judgment and the name-calling that he has thrown at every Republican in the House and the Senate," he said.
"He promised he was going to magically … get five or 15 Democrats to agree to abolish Obamacare and … get the president to sign it. And if the president won't sign it, you need 67 senators and you need two-thirds of the House.
"Arithmetic told you this strategy that Ted had was never going to work."
Norquist also criticized the negative campaign anti-Obamacare forces launched.
"All those groups sending out emails about how they were going to defund Obamacare, none of them spent a penny trying to get a single Democrat vote," he said.
"They sent insulting emails and questioned the manhood and the patriotism and the bravery of every Republican who didn't agree with their strategy, but that doesn't get you a single vote.
All those Republicans were in favor of abolishing Obamacare if there was any way you could show them how … So Ted Cruz needs to explain to Republicans why he just spent several months and then several weeks dragging them across broken glass for no purpose."
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