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Sen. Cruz Battles To Regain Trust Of GOP House Members

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And President Obama is also paying close attention to what's unfolding on Capitol Hill this week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to move forward yesterday on a bill to keep the government running past October 1st.

(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE SESSION)

GREENE: That voice interrupting there, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the lone voice in the Senate chamber wanting to stall.

(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE SESSION)

GREENE: Senator Cruz is a possible contender for president in 2016. He's been taking heat from some congressional Republicans for goading the House into passing a spending bill that defunds Obamacare, and then announcing afterwards that the Senate will likely strip out the defunding language, anyway. Many Republicans say they feel betrayed by the Texas senator, accusing him of starting a fight that he never figured out how to win.

As NPR's Ailsa reports, Cruz is now fighting to convince House Republicans otherwise.

AILSA CHANG, BYLINE: The resentment against the Texas Senator started gathering real steam last week when a CNN reporter mentioned she heard a House Republican aide compare Ted Cruz's manhood to that of Wendy Davis, and found it lacking. Davis is the Texas state legislator who became an overnight celebrity after she filibustered 11 hours to block a law limiting abortions.

For the past week, Cruz has been trying to appear unfazed by the insults.

: Well, I'm always impressed with the courage of anonymous congressional aides.

(LAUGHTER)

: You know, it is very easy in Washington to make this about personalities, to make this about people. This is not about any of us. This is about the American people.

CHANG: And for the American people, Cruz has this promise.

: I will do everything necessary and anything possible to defund Obamacare.

CHANG: The operative word here is possible. Cruz and other conservatives insisted all summer there was a real chance House Republicans could cripple Obamacare by inserting defunding language into a spending bill right before the government was set to shut down. Only problem is that resolution will never make it out of the democratically controlled Senate.

Majority Leader Harry Reid repeated that for the umpteenth time on Monday.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

CHANG: So then what was Cruz's grand plan? Well, a lot of House Republicans think he didn't have one.

(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS BROADCASTS)

CHANG: That was Michael Grimm of New York, Peter King of New York and Sean Duffy from Wisconsin on MSNBC and CNN. The broad assumption is that the Senate will pass a spending resolution without the health care defunding provision and send that bill back to the House. Cruz needs 41 Senators to block that from happening. One of those will not be Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma told CBS the votes just aren't there.

(SOUNDBITE OF CBS BROADCAST)

CHANG: But Cruz and his allies say they aren't giving up. They're trying to come up with maneuvers to overcome the upper hand Senate Democrats now have in this fight. On the floor Monday, Cruz accused Harry Reid of planning to use procedural tricks to ram through a spending bill without any Obamacare language.

(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE SESSION)

CHANG: Meanwhile, Reid says it's Cruz who's resorting to brute force days before a government shutdown, by taking the country hostage for his own political goals. And as for procedural tricks, Reid says he's just following established Senate rules. Ailsa Chang, NPR News, the Capitol.

GREENE: This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Ailsa Chang is an award-winning journalist who hosts All Things Considered along with Ari Shapiro, Audie Cornish, and Mary Louise Kelly. She landed in public radio after practicing law for a few years.