Weird Republican silent votes to raise debt ceiling -- thanks to Ted Cruz

One of the weirdest things to happen lately in Congress was the recent vote to raise the debt ceiling.

It began with Republicans trying to attach first one thing and then another to the bill to force some concession from Democrats.   Instead of taking the bait, as in the past, Democrats simply held firm and won the day . . . until . . .

Ted Cruz rose to the occasion to snatch a noisy defeat from the jaws of a silent defeat for his fellow Republicans.

Here's how that came down.    Realizing that they would hurt themselves if they forced another government shutdown over the debt ceiling -- with drastic consequences for the global economies -- House Republicans simply caved in and let it pass without any conditions with enough votes from Republicans to join all Democrats to pass it.

It passed with the fewest votes from the majority party (28) of any major piece of legislation since they've been keeping statistics on that measure.  

What would normally happen then is for the Senate to pass it by "unanimous consent," which means that they do not take a roll call and no individual votes are recorded.   Thus, in their re-election campaigns, they can't be accused by ultra right wing opponents of having cast a vote to raise the debt ceiling.

Ted Cruz would not go along, however.   He forced a vote by filibustering the bill.   Instead of passing with 51 Democratic votes, Cruz forced a cloture vote, meaning Democrats would have to muster 61 votes to move the bill forward.   That meant that six Republicans would have to join the Democrats -- or else let the nation go into default on its loans, or shut down the government again.

Republicans senators were furious.  Now they were going to have to cast a vote -- and, thanks to Ted Cruz, either way they voted would be a political liability for those up for re-election with right-wing opponents.

Never let it be said that Mitch McConnell lacks parliamentary cunning.   He corralled six colleagues (who had less to lose politically) and got them to agree to vote yes;  then he went to Harry Reid and got his consent to instruct the Senate clerk not to announce how each member voted.    They took the vote, but recorded them silently.   Supposedly, then, no one would know who the six were.   Except that a reporter asked the clerk for a copy of the vote -- and it was released anyway.

What a weird day.    The debt ceiling got raised without conditions.  But the reality of the utter disarray within the Republican party reached a new level of obviousness.

For his part, Ted Cruz took an unwarranted victory lap, claiming that the thing that his Republican colleagues feared the most was having to tell the truth.    Is he a secret Democratic operative?    He seems to be working for their side, for sure.  As Chris Matthews said on MSNBC's Hardball:   Cruz is not trying to lead the Republican party;  he's trying to reduce it to a small ideological few, isolated and combative, with him as the head of it.

Ach, meiner Gott.  Grosser Schadenfreude.
 
Ralph