It’s a growing group:
By forcing the Senate to round up 60 votes to end debate and force a final vote on a clean increase of the debt ceiling, Cruz knowingly complicated things for the top two Republicans in the chamber — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (Texas). Both men face primary challenges from their ideological right and neither relished the idea of helping break a filibuster for a debt ceiling increase with no Republican proposals attached. …
There is nothing that politicians — and especially Senators — hate more than being forced into a politically uncomfortable vote by a colleague of the same party. McConnell and Cornyn, both of whom are favorites to win their primaries, will never forget Cruz’s move this past week. And, Cruz is plenty smart enough to realize that.
Byron York ponders the maneuver:
In the end, the gambit accomplished nothing for Senate Republicans. Some GOP lawmakers who already disliked Cruz now dislike him even more. But the episode did remind the Republican leadership, as if it needs any reminding, that there are conservatives around the country who are deeply frustrated by the GOP and want it to show some fight. To them, Cruz represents that fight. Maybe they’ve been misled. Maybe they’re living in a fantasy land. But that’s what they believe. Republican leaders have to keep them in mind as November approaches.
Harsanyi thinks McConnell brought this on himself:
[I]f the debt ceiling isn’t a hill worth dying on – and it certainly isn’t – leadership should have explained this explicitly rather than leading on the base. It was only back in January when McConnell told the faithful on national television that some of “the most significant legislation passed in the past 50 years has been in conjunction with the debt limit. I think for the president to ask for a clean debt ceiling when we have a debt this size of our economy is irresponsible.” What McConnell should have added then is: but there’s nothing we can do about it right now. We have to work on winning more seats, and then we can stop this endless cycle of irresponsible spending.
Beutler sees Cruz’s actions as counterproductive:
[T]o the extent that the right’s shared ambition is to actually revive debt limit brinksmanship in the future, Cruz undermined the cause.
He made McConnell et al. vote to break his filibuster, and they are now half-pregnant with a clean debt limit increase. If he hadn’t forced the issue, Republicans would have an easier time justifying a return to extortive tactics in 2015. But unless McConnell and Cornyn and the 10 others who joined Democrats to break Cruz’ filibuster all disappear, Senate Republicans will have an extremely difficult time explaining why the debt limit is a legitimate source of leverage. After all, they all implicitly rejected that notion with their votes last week.
The Dish 