Clipping the Wings of Ted Cruz: How Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Reclaims the Republican Party in 2016

Sean K. LongPolitical Science Senior Thesis

University of Notre DameSubmitted April 29, 2015

Advised by Geoffrey Layman

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Tables of Contents

I. Introduction…3

II. Current Political Landscape…10

III. Understanding Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell: Background and Desires…17

IV. The Institutional Game: Senate Procedure and Strategy in the 114th Congress…30

V. A Negotiation Strategy for Majority Leader McConnell…50

VI. Conclusion…58

Works Cited…60

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“Earlier today, I got a call from the President. Also from Senator Reid and the Speaker and Ted Cruz too…All of them have the view that we ought to see what areas of

agreement there are and see if we can make some progress for the country.”

– Senator Mitch McConnell, 5 November 2014, one day after the 2014 midterm elections

I. Introduction

Theodore Roosevelt, whose split with William Howard Taft in 1912 fractured the

Republican Party, was president the last time parties in Congress were as polarized as

they are today (Mansbridge and Martin vii). While both parties have shifted further

towards the extremes, as Layman et al. (2010) explain, “GOP candidates and office

holders have moved right more than their Democratic counterparts have moved left in

recent years.” This reflects Saunders and Abramowitz’s (2004) similar finding that

Republican activists are farther to the right of the electorate than active Democrats are to

the left across the policy spectrum. Therefore, this paper incorporates literature on

negotiation, institutional and non-institutional power in the United States Senate, and

political polarization to provide insights for a Republican Party that must negotiate with

its activist base to succeed in 2016. I define Republicans’ “success” as maintaining

control of the House of Representatives and Senate, while proposing policies that make a

more liberal presidential electorate comfortable electing a Republican president. As then-

Vice President Nixon argued, Republicans present themselves as “economic

conservatives, but conservatives with a heart” (Goldwater 5).

I choose to analyze the Senate because, whereas the House of Representatives

will have a 28-seat surplus to pass legislation, Senate Republicans will need to negotiate

with at least six non-Republican votes to overcome a filibuster threat (Manning). I

primarily focus on two figures, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and

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Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas). These two represent the clash between rank-and-file

Republicans and far-right Republicans unwilling to compromise with President Obama.

Whereas Cruz influenced McConnell and the Republican Party largely on the Senate

floor in the 113th Congress, Cruz will influence both as a non-establishment presidential

candidate in the 114th Congress. One half-century ago, Ralph Huitt (1961) presented a

model of “the Senate man” and “the outsider” that fits the Cruz-McConnell relationship.

McConnell is “the Senate man, proud of the institution and ready to defend its traditions

and perquisites against all outsiders” (566-567). Cruz is the “Outsider”—identified by

his “conscious rejection of the behavior associated with the Inner Club…speak[ing] out

whenever he pleases on whatever subject he chooses without regard to whether he can get

any vote but his own” (571).

On March 23, 2015, during a weekly Convocation at the evangelical Liberty

University, Senator Cruz announced his candidacy for President of the United States.

Cruz promised that a new generation of “courageous conservatives” would “reignite the

promise of America” (The Washington Post). Still a junior senator without the

minority’s procedural toolkit, Cruz will work outside the Senate to influence Republican

Party priorities before November 2016. Senator Cruz, who ranked 94th in seniority in the

113th Senate and remains 41st in seniority among Senate Republicans, is a face of Senate

non-institutional power (Roll Call). Elected in 2012, the anti-establishment Tea Partier

and darling of the far-right activist base operates outside conventional power structures to

influence legislation in both the House and Senate. Directly in the Senate and indirectly

on the campaign trail, Cruz will challenge the institutionalist McConnell, who by many

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accounts is inclined to seek compromise solutions to govern effectively in the 114th

Congress.

This thesis poses the question: How should Republican Majority Leader Mitch

McConnell negotiate with an anti-compromise wing of Tea Partiers and evangelicals—

personified in Ted Cruz—if the Republican Party seeks to present itself as a governing

party in the 2016 presidential and senatorial elections? I argue that Majority Leader

McConnell and establishment Republicans now view compromising with Senate

Democrats to pass legislation as necessary to pursue electoral and policy interests.

However, McConnell must compensate for Cruz, who largely views bipartisan

compromise as antithetical to the Republican cause and whose presidential campaign will

push a crowded Republican primary field towards more extreme positions.

Therefore, McConnell must identify a sub-caucus of Democrats and Republicans

to craft bipartisan Senate agreement capable of reaching President Obama’s desk, even if

he refuses to sign it. For example, according to Quorum Analytics, the first 100 days of

the 114th Senate saw increases in bipartisan co-sponsorships (44% compared to 39% and

37% in the previous two Congresses, respectively), the highest number of amendments

since 1975, and more introduced bills than at the same time during the previous two

Congresses (Marks). Despite the increased action, the McConnell-led Senate produced

fewer results, passing only five bills (compared to 6 and 8 at the same point in the

previous two Congresses) and enacting zero. However, with bipartisan legislation on

Keystone XL (passed), a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (introduced but not

passed), Iran legislation and the confirmation of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, among

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others, both Republicans and Democrats can claim bipartisanship (Washington Post

Editorial Board).

Republicans, by tying President Obama to presumptive Democratic presidential

nominee Hillary Clinton, can claim credit for Republican-led bipartisan achievement,

undemocratic executive action by a Democratic president, and that only a Republican

president will sign legislation such as Keystone XL into law. The remaining challenge

will be allowing the Republican presidential nominee, recently emerged from an activist-

driven primary, to triangulate without being called a “flip-flopper.” Since the nominee

must be able to triangulate through adopting Republican positions that already exist, I

argue that Majority Leader McConnell should use the Senate to create a “menu of

bipartisan positions” for the 2016 Republican nominee to selectively champion in a

general election. Part of this negotiation may not be McConnell’s ability to coax Cruz to

join establishment Republicans, but to minimize the caucus’ size by giving potential

members something to lose in joining Cruz’s cause.1

To accomplish this, I argue that McConnell’s internal strategy should revolve

around a bipartisan 13-member informal governing coalition, consisting of eight

moderate Democrats and five Republicans. Whereas the Speaker of the House with a

unified caucus can impose sweeping partisan progress (Rawls 88), as Bach (1983)

explains, “the Majority Leader can only propose the agenda; he may not impose it.” In

negotiation literature, a BATNA (“best alternative to a negotiated agreement”) is each

side’s “preferred course of action in the absence of a deal” (Luecke, location 287).2

1 Personal Communication with Eric Washburn on December 27, 2014. Washburn is a former Legislative Assistant to Senators Daschle and Reid. He suggested that McConnell co-opt about six Republicans (like Mike Lee) who might be sympathetic to Cruz, and give them leadership roles, committee assignments beyond their seniority, etc. 2 Note: “Location 287” refers to the location in the Kindle E-Books edition of this text.

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Generally, a better BATNA equates to more negotiation power. For instance, absent a

negotiated agreement with McConnell, Cruz’s BATNA is to appeal to Senate and House

colleagues sympathetic to an informal Cruz Caucus, as well as to the public. As the Cruz

Caucus grows, Cruz sees his BATNA as more attractive. McConnell’s ability to isolate

and negotiate with Cruz depends on the size of Cruz’s BATNA, which increases with

each new member that joins Cruz’s cause. However, as Steven S. Smith (2014)

explained following the 2014 midterm elections, “More or less, McConnell has about six

months to be the primary spokesman for Senate Republicans and then he’s going to have

substantial competition,” with four Republican senators speculated to hold presidential

aspirations (Bolton; Smith). Therefore, I analyze the ongoing Cruz-McConnell

negotiation while offering procedural steps that McConnell could take to improve his

BATNA early in the 114th Congress.

After reviewing the current political landscape following the 2014 midterm

elections, this paper proceeds in four parts. The first section profiles McConnell and

Cruz as two Republicans with often-divergent interests and motivations, with the purpose

to illuminate how senators who largely agree on substance can differ on process. The

second and third sections examine the tools of Senate institutional and non-institutional

influence, with the purpose to explain how a Senate leader should shift tactics when a

maverick, non-senior member such as Senator Cruz transitions from the minority to the

majority. The second section draws lessons from literature on both Senate history and

political polarization to define the institutional playing field (Toobin). This intends to

show Cruz’s diminished institutional power as a non-senior majority Senator, and provide

context for his increased reliance on outside influence especially following the midterm

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elections. Through reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Ted Cruz argues that a battle,

whether in war or politics, is won by “choosing the terrain on which it will be fought”

(Toobin). As former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle described, a

majority leader’s the “only real power” is “the respect for the position and the power of

his persuasion.” Therefore, this account hopes to portray the “messiness of the Senate,”

exploring the role of the filibuster, unanimous consent agreements and other procedural

tools that junior majority members use to influence the Senate agenda (Crespin and

Monroe 1; Hanson, location 592).

The third section defines the non-institutional terrain. I offer original quantitative

research into the 2012 Convention Delegate Study to ask whether the freshman Texas

Senator embodies a rise of conservative opposition to compromise, or is a lone star.

While recognizing the limitations of roll-call vote analysis, I compare 113th Congress

Roll Call data with data from the 48 individual votes taken on the S. 1 Keystone XL

pipeline legislation (Lewis and Poole). Using percent likelihood that individual senators

vote alongside McConnell, Reid and Cruz as the dependent variable, I ask whether a

senator’s re-election date (2014, 2016 or 2018) has a statistically significant effect on

one’s likelihood to vote with the Majority Leader on Keystone XL. Together, these two

sections illustrate how Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can use institutional and non-

institutional tools to improve his bargaining position, or “BATNA,” with Senator Ted

Cruz and the far-right wing of the Republican Party.

The final section offers a negotiation strategy for Majority Leader McConnell as

Senator Cruz uses outside influence—in his roles as both senator and presidential

candidate—to shift Republican Policy to the right during the 2016 presidential primary.

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While Majority Leader McConnell cannot directly negotiate with Cruz on the Senate

floor, McConnell should use the thirteen-member bipartisan coalition to stake out

Republican establishment positions for the eventual Republican nominee to adopt after an

activist-driven primary. The Republican presidential nominee, having shifted right

during the primary election, can triangulate during the general election by championing a

few of these bipartisan but Republican-led positions. McConnell portrays the Senate as

capable of passing substantive legislation, while the Republican nominee can choose to

either maintain the primary stance (i.e. standing up for the candidate’s values) or safely

shift to a more pragmatic Republican position (i.e. compromise in order to achieve

bipartisan compromise) on each issue.

The Cruz-McConnell relationship represents the historic battle between

institutional and non-institutional power in the U.S. Senate. From a contemporary

perspective, the Cruz-McConnell dynamic represents the battle between more pragmatic

“establishment Republicans” and conservative “purists” who place ideological goals

above party goals and compromise. Through understanding the intra-party negotiation

between two figures epitomizing this insider-outsider relationship, one can better

understand the nature of American politics and the exercise of power as a fractured party

faces a decisive presidential election.

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II. Current Political Landscape

In an era of increased polarization, Ted Cruz tactfully exploited a wrinkle in the

GOP. According to Yale constitutional scholar Jack Balkin, “We are near the peak of a

long cycle of increasing polarization between the nation’s two political parties…

primarily due to the increasing radicalization of the Republicans over time” (Mann and

Ornstein 44). Balkin proposes two reasons for this: conflict extension and a loss of

Republican political dominance. Conflict extension states that a politician’s stance on

one issue usually predicts that politician’s stance on a wide range of economic and social

issues (Graber). For example, if I know one’s stance on abortion, I can predict his or her

stance on climate change or the corporate income tax. The corollary to fewer

crosscutting issue spaces is that more stances become labeled as exclusively

‘Democratic’ or ‘Republican’ (see Layman and Carsey 2002; Layman et al. 2010).

This presented problems for both rank-and-file and more conservative

Republicans when Democratic Majority Leader Reid controlled the Senate agenda in the

113th Congress. For Tea Party and evangelical Republicans, “[c]ompromise [was] likely

to be seen as political failure…or lack of ideological purity” (Balkin 1170). Rank-and-

file Republicans more pre-disposed to compromise would “fear that any compromise

with Democrats [would] encourage primary challenges from more extreme candidates on

the right.” Second, even with recent 2014 gains, the GOP has overall experienced a loss

of political dominance, due to a “shrinking” base (older, whiter, more religious) and more

radical internal elements (such as the Tea Party) (1171). Balkin also finds that

polarization, conflict extension and slipping dominance create incentives “to engage in

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strategies of obstruction and confrontation that well-socialized politicians might not have

attempted in the past (1172). Perhaps this explains why Ted Cruz frames the battle not as

Democrats versus Republicans, but as the “entrenched career politicians in Washington

versus the American people” (emphasis added) (Trinko).

According to W. Lee Rawls (2009), the American legislative system is capable of

either sweeping partisan progress or incremental bipartisan progress (88). Even if all 54

Senate Republicans support a bill, the minority’s power to filibuster makes “bipartisan

negotiations…generally a precondition to passing contentious legislation in the Senate”

(88). Majority Leader McConnell and Senator Cruz differ in terms of the process to

achieve their similar policy and political goals. McConnell recognizes that the Senate

with a powerful minority can only deliver incremental bipartisan progress, while the

obstreperous Cruz favors sweeping partisan change. Further, both McConnell and Cruz

share a political interest in electing a Republican president in 2016, while McConnell

hopes to retain his position as majority leader beyond 2016. To achieve this goal,

McConnell believes over the next two years a Republican-controlled Senate must show

that it can govern, and that requires passing legislation. Two editorials published

surrounding the 2014 congressional elections—one published by Majority Leader

McConnell and Speaker Boehner, the other by Senator Cruz—present the clearest

evidence of this divide.

In a Wall Street Journal editorial published immediately following the midterms,

McConnell and Boehner are “looking ahead to the next Congress” and mention the word

“bipartisan” five times. Senator Cruz, however, preemptively outlined his own views on

‘Ten Republican priorities for 2015’ in a USA Today editorial two weeks before the

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midterms. The Cruz and McConnell-Boehner columns share many policy interests, but

Cruz advocates a more confrontational approach. Cruz frames his strategy around a

Republican president in 2017 implementing bolder conservative proposals, while

considering the prospect of legislation that can both pass a Republican-held Senate and

President Barack Obama’s veto pen as an afterthought. Further, Cruz makes no mention

of “bipartisan” efforts, daring Democrats instead to “filibuster or veto these [Republican]

bills” (USA Today).

In short, each column presents a common goal—consolidated Republican control

of the House, Senate and White House; conflicting strategies for the next two years

endanger this goal. Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Boehner recognize

compromise as necessary for a “stronger economy” in “the final years of President

Barack Obama’s presidency,” while Cruz’s strategy rejects compromise in anticipation of

a Republican president who will implement similar priorities in 2017.

The Republican Debate on “Obamacare”

In March 2010, President Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act (ACA),

commonly known as “Obamacare,” which aims to achieve universal health coverage

through an individual mandate. As Miller and Burton (2013) explain, “perhaps no single

issue has more successfully galvanized the Republican Party” since President Obama

took office (17). President Obama’s signature health care legislation irks Republicans

not necessarily because of the individual mandate itself; even former Republican Speaker

of the House Newt Gingrich has acknowledged that the mandate’s genesis came from the

conservative Heritage Foundation in the early 1900s (Roy). What troubles Republicans

more is the process—Democrats “resorted to [50-vote] budget reconciliation as a means

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to circumvent their loss of a filibuster-proof majority” to pass Obamacare in March 2010

(Connelly 9). While Ted Cruz’s strategy represents only a sliver of Republicans, the size

of that sliver will determine his bargaining power with McConnell in the 114th Congress.

Debate over the future of Obamacare defines the battle lines well. Senate Republicans

considered three methods of attack, with Ted Cruz the face of the most extreme (Nather):

Option One: Full repeal through regular order

This is both symbolic and innocuous, but unlikely to succeed given an insurmountable 60-vote supermajority needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster. For example, Rand Paul (R-KY) stated that he is “committed one hundred percent to full repeal,” but included that “using regular order or reconciliation is an inside the beltway fight.”

Option Two: Modify the law through regular order

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) best represents this stance to “keep what works and get rid of what doesn’t.”

Option Three: Full repeal through the budget reconciliation process

Reconciliation measures “cannot be filibustered and require only a simple majority for passage” (Evans). A Republican majority could avoid Senate Democrats altogether and pass the bill, which President Obama would veto. Ted Cruz championed this stance, stating, “I think we should start by using [budget] reconciliation to pass complete and total repeal” (Nathan). Senators Marco Rubio3 (R-FL) and freshman Mike Rounds4 (R-SC) tacitly advocated this option. This is symbolic but potentially very harmful to future bipartisan cooperation, as Republicans would use a back-channel procedural measure to exclude Democrats from the legislative process.

Assuming support from the Republican-dominated House of Representatives on

each measure, only Option Two produces legislation that President Obama would

consider signing. The most likely scenario is that Senate Republicans first introduce

Option One to fulfill their campaign promise to voters, before focusing efforts on Option

Two, garnering at least six Democratic votes on individual measures to reform

3 Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida): “I think we need to do it any way we can to get it done”4 Senator Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota), via Rob Skjosberg, Director of Rounds’ transition team): “repeal and replace as much of Obamacare as possible through the budget process"

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Obamacare. However, Option Three—“total Obamacare repeal so Obama can veto it”—

produces no legislation and excludes Senate Democrats, who will in turn be less likely to

support future Republican-led measures to reform Obamacare. If Ted Cruz becomes

more than an “army of one,” his bargaining power increases with Majority Leader

McConnell and other key Senators such as Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-

Utah) (Nather; POLITICO Special Report). For example, Hatch demonstrated his

uncertainty after the midterm elections through stating that he was “currently examining

all options and talking with his colleagues on how to best approach the issue” (Nather).

There are a number of factors that make negotiation more favorable in the 114th

Congress, but effective negotiation requires delicate action by Majority Leader

McConnell. In the 113th Congress, both parties had clear incentives for strategic

disagreement, described by Barber and McCarty (2013) as “a situation in which a

president, party, or another political actor...see[s] more political benefit in refusing to

negotiate and in preserving the issue for future campaigns” (35, 57). Senate Republicans,

as a minority, had little stake in governing and saw greater political gain by serving as

consistent opposition to President Obama and the Senate Democratic majority.

However, with the political realignment in the 114th Congress and Republican

control of both congressional chambers, I contend that most Senate Republicans and

Democrats now have an incentive to agree—even if President Obama does not. One

might assume that President Obama has an interest in creating a legislative legacy in his

second term. Those hopes, to some, were dashed when he issued an executive order on

immigration shortly after the 2014-midterm elections and vetoed the Keystone

legislation. Majority Leader McConnell has an incentive to negotiate with Senate

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Democrats to achieve consensus policy solutions, as he seeks to demonstrate the

Republican Party’s capacity to govern. Further, the freshmen Republican Senators in the

114th Congress owe their seats to the Republican establishment, whose calculated strategy

shepherded certain candidates to Congress. Chris McDaniel, a tea party conservative

who nearly defeated six-term Senator Thad Cochran in the Republican Party primary,

stated, “You had the entire Republican Party in Washington doing everything they could

to keep the true conservative out” (Rucker and Costa). Regardless of how conservative

or combative these Senators campaigned to be, most owe their congressional seats to the

Republican establishment and, in many ways, to their majority leader.

Republicans overall—and especially Senate Republicans—must show themselves

as a governing party capable of legislating at the local, state and national level (Brooks).

As New York Times columnist David Brooks describes, the midterm elections awarded

Republicans with “more legislative power nationwide than anytime over the past

century”: 69 of 99 state legislative bodies, 31 of the 50 governorships, a 29-seat cushion

in the House of Representatives and 54 seats in the Senate (Richardson). This lack of

political cover and new electoral interests leave Republicans with incentives to present

legislation to become the undisputed governing party capable of controlling the

presidency (Cillizza, Blake and Sullivan).

The Senate illustrates this reality well. Republican Senators elected in the 2010

Tea Party wave ran outside the establishment and owed little allegiance to the party

leadership for their seats.5 However, when a presidential election in two years will

motivate more of the Democratic electorate to vote, Republicans must defend 24 of the

5 Personal Communication with Joshua Kaplan, Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, October 2014.

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34 Senate seats up for re-election. These Senators must rely on resources from the

Republican leadership, especially as seven control seats that President Obama carried in

2008 and 2012 (Cillizza, Blake and Sullivan). These 24 Senators arguably have more

incentive to negotiate now than in the previous Congress.

However, Ted Cruz, with sights on his own Republican presidential nomination in

2016, will likely continue to see compromise as antithetical to his own political and

ideological ambitions. The dynamic over the next two years between Cruz, the outsider,

and McConnell, the institutionalist, will greatly determine who controls the Republican

agenda, its legislative outcomes, and thus Majority Leader McConnell’s capacity to

govern in the 114th Congress. McConnell’s electoral interest is two-pronged: demonstrate

the Republican Senate’s capacity to govern while making the electorate feel comfortable

electing a Republican president in 2016 (MacGillis).

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III. Understanding Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell: Background and Desires

To understand the negotiation between Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell, one must

first understand the men. Through a brief introduction to the story, interests and desires

of each, this section provides a perspective through which to view each actor’s past and

future decisions. While Cruz, the Senate newcomer, receives a more systematic profile, I

examine both Senators with three aspects in mind: perception, profile and desires. After

discussing general perceptions, the second area includes biographical elements that are

essential to understand—and in some cases rationalize—each figure’s decision-making.

Ted Cruz has been compared to 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater,

as well as former Republican Senators Jesse Helms and Joseph McCarthy, so I analyze

the extent to which we can learn from these comparisons. Here, I also consider how Cruz

compares to the activist style from the model “Outsider in the Senate” presented by Huitt

(1961). The final section makes explicit each figure’s presumed interests, motivations

and constraints, to provide context for the later analysis of the Cruz-McConnell

relationship when the Senate chamber is the arena.

The Cruz profile relies heavily on work of Mario Broes, who synthesized

elements of Ted Cruz’s life story into Ted Cruz: Cruzing Republicans to the White

House. Much of the base narrative of Majority Leader McConnell stems from a

November 2013 article written by Jason Zengerle in Politico Magazine titled, “Get

Mitch,” and Alec MacGillis’ book titled, The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch

McConnell, two comprehensive accounts of McConnell’s political ascent.

Senator Ted Cruz

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“If you're going to persuade everyone whether it's politics, your career or your personal life ... you can't fall into the mistake of thinking that anyone who disagrees with you is either stupid or evil.”

- Ted Cruz, on advice to college graduates from a Houston Chronicle interview

Perception

“I am perfectly happy to compromise and work with anybody, Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, I'll work with Martians, if— and the "if" is critical— they are willing to cut spending and reduce the debt”

- Senator Ted Cruz, on Fox News Sunday in August 2012

“He was not a compromiser. He was not somebody who tried to make friends by accepting what was then the political correctness of the day. If you want to defeat Ted Cruz, you have to appeal to his principles not to his tactics.”

- Alan Dershowitz, Cruz’s former professor at Harvard Law School

Uber, a mobile ride-sharing service where drivers can turn their cars into private

cabs, “disrupts” the old and highly regulated taxi business (Nocera). Ted Cruz calls

himself the “Uber of American politics.”6 Paraphrasing Cruz: The power of technology

is to disrupt the delivery of a good or service, thrusting enormous pushback upon the

service’s incumbent providers.7 The “old and highly regulated service” is the American

political system, the “incumbent providers” are career politicians, and Ted Cruz is Uber.

Republicans who oppose Ted Cruz generally agree with his principles of strict

adherence to free-market economics and constitutional liberty (Broes). Supporters share

both his principles and tactics, and the principal tactic is to “stop the Obama agenda.”8

Many—including Cruz’s constituents in Texas—think highly of the junior Senator with

presumed presidential ambitions. In April 2014, Cruz was “the most popular Texas

6 This quote comes from Ted Cruz’s speech to the Congressional Summit on Next Generation Leadership, held in Washington, D.C. on December 2, 2014. I attended the event. 7 Ibid.8 From Broes: Early in 2011, Jim Geraghty got the following statement from Cruz: “what [the 2012] election is all about is helping provide leadership to defend free-market principles and stop the Obama agenda.”

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politician,” with a 47 percent approval rating that bested Governor Rick Perry and senior

Senator John Cornyn (Ayala-Talavera). To supporters, including Washington Post

columnist and conservative icon George Will (2011), Cruz is “as good as it gets”—a

steadfast conservative with uncompromising principles who also happens to be the first

Hispanic elected to represent Texas in the Senate.

However, many Republicans despise Senator Cruz. On February 12, 2014, Cruz

filibustered a measure to increase the debt ceiling, forcing then-Minority Leader

McConnell and eleven other Republicans to join Democrats to overcome the 60-vote

filibuster threshold (Broes, location 204). While all twelve voted against final passage of

the debt ceiling increase, a primary challenger could now accuse them of voting

alongside Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. Mitch McConnell, according to

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, “thinks that Cruz is literally the most selfish

senator that he’s ever seen in his years here” (Kaplan, R.). Representative Peter King, a

New York congressman who in 2013 introduced legislation to support victims of

Hurricane Sandy that Senator Cruz opposed, created a new political action committee to

show that “[t]here are Republican voices out there that are alternatives to Ted Cruz”

(Burns). Another anonymous Republican congressman lamented, “If you talk to Ted

Cruz, tell him to stay on his side of the Capitol. We have enough problems without that

idiot coming over here and screwing things up” (Warren). For many Republicans, Cruz

is a disrespectful and media-obsessed freshman senator who, at best, will only push his

colleagues farther right and, at worst, will cost the Republican Party the presidency in

2016 (Zengerle). Perhaps Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is correct in calling Cruz a

“wacko bird.”

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Story

Before evaluating Ted Cruz as a negotiation partner with Majority Leader

McConnell, one must understand Cruz as a rational actor. This requires understanding

the three traits undergirding Ted Cruz: hardcore conservatism, unwavering principles,

and single-issue opposition to Obamacare. For Cruz adversaries, my intention is not to

prove the Senator’s actions justifiable, only to show that these actions make sense in the

context of his biography.

Cruz fights the battles of his father and the founding fathers. Born in Cuba and

raised under Dictator Fulgencio Batista, Cruz’s father Rafael became a leading militant

against the regime (Broes [79]]). Facing death after release from military detention,

Rafael Cruz secured a student visa in 1957 and arrived in the U.S. to study at the

University of Texas at Austin (Broes [33, 78]). Learning English while washing dishes,

Rafael pushed local organizations to support Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, with

his “liberators” coming to power in January 1959 (Broes [86]). Returning to Cuba

hoping to witness Castro’s “changed” Cuba, Rafael was “shocked” at the redistributive

policies and intolerance of dissenting, pro-Batista voices. His mother left her job as a

schoolteacher after the Castro regime forced public schools to teach communism; as

Rafael recounts, “She preferred to be publicly humiliated than to poison the minds of

schoolchildren with Marxist doctrine” (Broes [78]). Ted Cruz described his lessons from

hearing the experience that caused his family to leave Cuba with nothing but the clothes

on their back: “They didn’t know Castro was a communist; what they knew was that

Batista was a cruel and oppressive dictator” (Weiner). Misled by Castro’s promise,

Rafael Cruz would not make that mistake again; in Ted Cruz’s words, “He worked seven

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days a week…paid his way through the University of Texas…and eventually [went] on to

start a small business and to work towards the American dream” (Broes [83]). Broes

encapsulates the effect this experience had on Ted Cruz’s upbringing:

Raphael Cruz’s worldview revolved around the fear of repeating the experience of the Cuban Revolution in America and it became part of the future senator’s upbringing. “When my son was eight or nine years old, our conversation around the dinner table centered on politics every day,” Raphael Cruz said. “I remember over and over I would ask him, ‘You know, Ted, when I faced oppression in Cuba, I had a place to come to— if we lose our freedoms here, where are we going to go?’” ([101])

Ted Cruz has two heroes: “My father and Ronald Reagan” ([09]). The preceding

story begins to explain the first, while the relationship between Cruz and his father

explains the second. From birth, Rafael Cruz raised his son on free-market economic

thought, once boasting, “Instead of reading comic books, he was reading Adam Smith, he

was reading Milton Friedman, he was reading von Mises, he was reading Frédéric

Bastiat” (Murphy). At 13, Ted Cruz started school at the Free Enterprise Education

Center, whose founder one former student called “a Santa Claus of Liberty” (Broes [17]).

With a curriculum revolving around the “Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom,” Cruz’s

favorite pillar was: “Everything that the government gives to you, it must first take away

from you” ([17]). A young Cruz was also chosen to join the Constitutional

Corroborators, a youth troupe that spoke about the Constitution to civic groups across

Texas; Rafael Cruz recalled, “each of the five kids memorized the entire U.S.

Constitution” (Brody). Campaigning for Texas Attorney General in 2009, Ted Cruz

recounted, “The two things that had the greatest impact on me were, number one, my

dad, and then this experience [at the Free Enterprise Education Center]” (Nordinger).

Overall, the Reaganesque values of economic liberty and small government were planted

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into Ted Cruz’s consciousness from an early age, making his two lifelong heroes

inextricably linked.

Ted Cruz’s background as a North American debate champion while at Princeton

University may partially explain his unwavering principles, but Cruz’s fight extends

beyond politics. Rafael Cruz became a born-again Christian five years after his son’s

birth and has now become a travelling preacher (Brody; Broes [153]). In a 2013

interview, Rafael explained: “When [Ted] was four I used to read Bible stories to him all

the time….And I would just say, you know Ted, you have been gifted above any man

that I know and God has destined you for greatness” (Brody). Later in the same

interview, Rafael declared, “before [Ted Cruz] left high school he knew… his purpose

was…to defend and protect freedom and the Constitution, to fight for free markets and

limited government.” And when Cruz carried this intellectual upbringing to Princeton

University and Harvard Law School, Rafael believed his son was conducting “missionary

work” with the liberal elite. When Ted Cruz speaks, he does not just defend himself, but

also his father, Ronald Reagan and, arguably, God.

Case Studies

Ted Cruz has been most prominently been compared to three figures, and each

roughly matches with one of Cruz’s three overarching traits; Barry Goldwater for

hardcore conservatism, Jesse Helms for unwavering principles, and Joseph McCarthy for

single-issue opposition. When a reporter asked Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA)—elected

to the Senate when Ronald Reagan ascended to the presidency in 1980—if he could

compare Ted Cruz to a former colleague, Grassley responded, “Not somebody I’ve

served with…I think Barry Goldwater—reading the history of Barry Goldwater—he

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made those sorts of impressions right away” (Broes [09]). While some see Cruz’s

presidential campaign as reminiscent of Goldwater’s ill-fated 1964 bid, and though Cruz

often evokes language similar to Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative, there are

two important differences. First, with an electorate reeling from John F. Kennedy’s

November 1963 assassination, Goldwater was destined to lose in 1964. Larry Sabato,

Director of the Miller Center of Politics at the University of Virginia, explained, “Long

story short, [Lyndon Baines] Johnson was going to win by a wide margin [in 1964]

regardless” (Nowicki). Second, Goldwater would never have announced his presidential

candidacy at Liberty University. As Dan Nowicki of The Arizona Republic noted,

“Goldwater was openly hostile to religious conservatives and once memorably quipped

that ‘every good Christian ought to kick [founder of Liberty University and the Moral

Majority Jerry] Falwell right in the ass.” Further, raised as an Episcopalian by a Jewish

father and Episcopalian mother, Goldwater was somewhat agnostic about organized

religion. Goldwater did not often attend church but stated, “If a man acts in a religious

way, an ethical way, then he’s really a religious man—and it doesn’t have a lot to do with

how often he gets inside a church” (Hollowverse). It is hard to imagine Ted Cruz

agreeing with this sentiment.

Regarding Jesse Helms, the 52-year Senator from North Carolina who The New

York Times dubbed a “beacon of conservatism,” Ted Cruz in 2013 declared in a Heritage

Foundation speech, “We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate” (Bendery).

A New York Times obituary for Senator Helms highlighted his “hard-edged

conservatism,” but also his knack for “taking on anyone, even leaders of his own party,

who strayed from his idea of ideological purity.” Ironically, President Reagan—one of

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Ted Cruz’s two heroes—called Helms “a thorn in my side” (Holmes). Cruz and Helms

share policy preferences but not electoral goals; Helms served for three decades in the

Senate, while Cruz will spent less than three years in the Senate before running for

president (Broder). Ideologically similar, the two sharply differ in electoral ambition,

with Helms more aligned with the “Senate man” that Huitt describes.

Finally, after Cruz appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in 2013, Washington

Post editorial columnist Richard Cohen argued that Cruz “is most like [Joseph] McCarthy

in his clever use of Obamacare as a cemetery ghoul” (Cohen). While an imperfect

comparison, Cruz and McCarthy found a Senate niche through firm single-issue

opposition. Whereas McCarthy made his career on communism, Cruz owes his rise to

relentless opposition to Obamacare. Again, however, McCarthy did not use his policy

interests as a means to reach higher office, while Cruz’s anti-Obamacare issue stance led

to no substantive outcome other than catapulting Cruz onto the national stage. Cruz is

much more methodical, rational and controlled than Joe McCarthy—a Roman Catholic

and alcoholic who drank himself to death two-and-a-half years after being censured by

the Senate (Senate Resolution 301; The History Channel).

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

“Most politicians dream of being president…McConnell dreams of being majority leader.”

- Former chief of staff Billy Piper (MacGillis 132)

“Politics “is [McConnell’s] avocation, vacation, vocation, all three.”- Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming (Get Mitch)

In Congress: The Electoral Connection, David Mayhew (1973) asks “whether

there is a connection between what [congressmen] do in office and their need to be

reelected” (Mayhew 37). Mitch McConnell, as pragmatic as Ted Cruz is principled,

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personifies this statement. When President Obama took office in 2009, Washington Post

columnist George Will called McConnell “Washington’s most important Republican and

second-most consequential elected official” (Get Mitch). Given that McConnell now

occupies the most powerful seat in the U.S. Senate, what can one learn from the new

Majority Leader’s past to understand his current decision-making?

While in college at the University of Louisville, McConnell learned to campaign

(MacGillis 2). He ran three unsuccessful campaigns—for president of the freshman

class, student senate and student council of the College of Arts and Sciences—before a

successful second run for president of the student council during his junior year (2, 7). A

former pollster aptly describes a 36-year-old McConnell’s first political job as

Republican executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky: “We didn’t have to deal with the

ego. Mitch was the best client to have...We were absolutely starting from scratch. We

could build something just the way we wanted, with no pushback” (2).

With the Republican Party wavering between Barry Goldwater conservatism and

a more moderate vision in the early 1960s, Mitch McConnell stood with the latter.9 The

former champion of abortion rights activists—whose campaign for county judge in

Louisville supported legalizing collective bargaining rights for public employees and an

endorsement from the AFL-CIO—now finds himself a vehement opposition to universal

healthcare, abortion rights and campaign finance regulation (MacGillis 4, 19; Get Mitch).

While Majority Leader McConnell’s strategy in the 113th Congress appeared to be one of

9 In a National Public Radio interview with Alec MacGillis on ‘The Cynic,’ MacGillis stated, “he is, of course, during the time of Barry Goldwater's 1964 nomination to the party as coming from the conservative wing, but there was still a very, very strong moderate contention of the party. And Mitch McConnell was completely on that side of the line.”

25

total obstruction, the purpose of this section is to show that McConnell calculates every

action with the next election in mind.10

For the protean Republican who former Republican colleague Arlen Specter

believed would make “no pretenses about subordinating policy to politics,” McConnell

adapts to his electorate and fundraising base (Neumann 89). “One must view the

Constitution as a document adaptable to condition of contemporary society,” a young

McConnell announced in a 1964 editorial urging Republicans to adopt a strong national

and state civil rights legislation (MacGillis 10). The former head of the Kentucky chapter

of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) once called McConnell, as head of

Jefferson County, “one of the best elected officials I ever worked with in terms of dealing

with [abortion rights]….Mitch understood procedural ways to stop legislation, and that’s

what he did” (21). However, McConnell became firmly pro-life when running for his

congressional seat for the U.S. in 1980, voting to block Medicaid funding for abortions in

cases of rape or incest (31).

To clearly understand the direct line between McConnell’s actions and electoral

interests, consider campaign finance reform. As a 31-year-old in 1973, McConnell wrote

an editorial to the Louisville-based Courier-Journal calling for “truly effective campaign

finance reform” (MacGillis 50). The aggressive proposal called to reduce contribution

limits for local Kentucky races from $2,500 to $300, with all donations disclosed and

overall spending limits (49). McConnell’s op-ed lambasted a status quo in which “[m]any

qualified and ethical persons are…totally priced out of the election marketplace” (54).

Even in Congress twenty years later, McConnell wrote that soft money, or then-

unregulated individual contributions to national political parties, “should be banned” and

10 Personal communication with Alec MacGillis, January 7, 2015.

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that “[a]ll campaign spending should be on the top of the table where voters can see it”

(54). As recent as 1996, McConnell supported basic disclosure of campaign

contributions, stating, “Disclosure is the best disinfectant, and I think the maximum

amount of disclosure is exactly what we need” (74).

However, recent—and rational—electoral calculations left McConnell a virulent

opponent of campaign finance regulation. As McConnell’s close former Republican

colleague Richard Lugar (IN) reflected, “Pragmatically, he’s come to the conclusion that

raising money is tremendously important for his own success” (64). The shrewd

McConnell has tailored his views on free speech to support his campaign finance stance.

Discussing a vote to ban flag burning in 1995 that McConnell had switched his previous

stance on to support at the final minute, Alec McGillis of The New Republic argued that

the “flip-flop” demonstrated McConnell’s willingness “to surrender a perennial crowd-

pleasing issue to strengthen his case for arguing against limits on campaign financing”

(62). When Democrats proposed the DISCLOSE Act in 2010 to require large

organizations to publically publish donor lists, it failed to reach cloture by one vote due to

a filibuster led by then-Minority Leader McConnell (Breckel; MacGillis 75). Most

recently during the 2014 lame-duck negotiations surrounding the omnibus appropriations

legislation, then-Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell found a mutual

interest in increasing party control through campaign finance. The provision increased

the power of parties in elections by allowing an individual donor to give up to $324,000

to fund party operations—a 30 percent increase from the previous $97,000 limit

(Blumenthal). Assuming that a wealthy donor seeks to spend $500,000 to influence an

election, McConnell and Reid have an incentive to funnel as much as possible towards

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parties rather than outside groups. McConnell’s thirty-year Senate tenure makes him the

most well-versed to use the institution and its procedures to his electoral advantage.

Majority Leader McConnell infamously stated that his goal was “for President

Obama to be a one-term president.” (Kessler) This paper assumes that strategy to obstruct

President Obama no longer reflects McConnell’s electoral interests. Former Senator

Robert Bennett (R-Utah) remembered a conversation with McConnell following

Obama’s 2008 election. According to Bennett, who once explained that “[e]very answer

[McConnell] gives is geared toward strategy within the Senate,” McConnell said:

‘We have a new president with an approval rating in the seventy percent area. We do not take him on frontally. We find issues where we can win, and we begin to take him down, one issue at a time. We create an inventory of losses, so it’s Obama lost on this, Obama lost on that. And we wait for the time where the image has been damaged to the point where we can take him on. We recognize the American people—even those who (do?) not approve of him— want him to have success, are hopeful’ (Green; MacGillis 97).

Balkin explains that, after witnessing how Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy’s

(MA) collaboration on the landmark No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education bill

inadvertently contributed to Republican President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election,

McConnell “altogether rationally” concluded that bipartisanship would not serve his

interests (1170). After all, in 2009, bipartisanship would confirm the newly elected

president’s post-partisan inauguration pledge to end “the petty grievances and false

promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled

our politics” (Lizza). Therefore, McConnell engaged in a calculated strategy to slowly

degrade Obama’s perception as a post-partisan president:

We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals because we thought— correctly, I think— that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward.

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Within this framework, it was entirely reasonable for McConnell and his caucus

to systematically oppose any measure that could bolster President Obama’s post-partisan

image. It worked: a 2012 memo by Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones called “Obama’s ratings…

consistently among the most polarized for a president in the last 60 years” (Blake and

Cillizza). President Obama’s early 2014 announcement that “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got

a phone,” articulated a willingness to bypass Congress through executive action that the

“post-partisan president” would never have conceded five years earlier. Whereas

McConnell once calculated that Republicans, according to Balkin, “have nothing to gain

from collaborating in anything that [President Obama] could then claim as an

achievement,” an opportunity for credit claiming now exists for the Majority Leader and

his Republican Senate majority (1170). While the same cannot be said for some in his

caucus, the politically adroit McConnell notices that unified intransigence is no longer

the only strategy to 1.) Maintain Senate control past 2016 and 2.) Make Americans

comfortable electing a Republican president in 2016 (1191).

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IV. The Institutional Game: Senate Procedure and Strategy in the 114th Congress

Barbara Sinclair (2006) describes the United States Senate as a “peculiar

combination of conflict and cooperation, of aggressive exploitation of the rules and of

accommodation” (Sinclair). Therefore, this section proceeds in three parts. First,

independent of its modern perception as a dysfunctional institution, I summarize the

Senate’s function and recent procedural innovations. Second, I introduce two procedural

dynamics that Majority Leader McConnell should consider to pursue the three basic

activities—credit claiming, position taking, and advertising—presented in Mayhew’s The

Electoral Connection. Finally, I conclude with a few procedural options for Majority

Leader McConnell to pursue his electoral and policy goals in the 114th Congress.

Time is the central commodity of the U.S. Senate; nearly every virtue and vice of

the institution derives from this fact. Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), the

longest-serving senator in U.S. history, often paraphrased Thomas Jefferson to argue that

the Senate is “intended to cool the cup of coffee from the House” (Smith, location 2510).

Two features—unlimited debate and unrestricted amendments—make the Senate stand

apart from other parliamentary bodies (Gold, location 105). Two groups—political

minorities and individual members—hold power disproportionate to their size (location

120). If time is the key Senate resource, the structure of unstructured debate but high

individualism makes time easy for individual members to exploit. This creates a

“common resource pool” problem, where “unchecked access” to a resource leads

individuals to “overuse the resource to the detriment of the whole” (Smith, location

1329).

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Discussions of Senate power often focus on the minority’s procedural tactics to

exercise disproportionate influence over majority’s agenda. For example, as members of

the minority in the 113th Congress, Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz notably engaged in

successful and unsuccessful attempts to manipulate Senate rules. However, I believe that

a more interesting dynamic exists within the majority party in the 114th Congress. While

leading the Senate towards its own policy and electoral goals, Majority Leader

McConnell must grapple with four members of his caucus with presidential ambitions—

Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Kentucky), Marco Rubio (Florida), and Lindsay Graham

(South Carolina) (Sabato). To varying degrees, each has an interest in using the

individualistic Senate as a platform to differentiate himself from the others and from the

Republican Party. In contrast to the Republican Party’s affirmative call to govern in

1994 based on the Contract with America, the Republican Party in 2014 ran on

opposition to Democratic rule to become the governing party (Brooks).

Procedural knowledge is power in the U.S. Senate. As congressional scholar

Martin Gold writes, “Individuals knowing procedure—and willing to employ it—can

wield influence far beyond their single vote” (Gold, location 61, 120). I will focus on

two procedural dynamics that Majority Leader McConnell can exploit in the 114th

Congress:

1.) The ‘Senate Syndrome,’ defined by Smith (2014) as “the combination of

minority-motivated obstruction and majority-imposed restrictions,” affects

Majority Leader McConnell’s promise to run the Senate under regular order in the

114th Congress (Smith, location 146). It is in McConnell’s electoral and policy

interest to restore committee power and, to the extent possible, pass

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appropriations bills under regular order rather than through omnibus legislation.

Further, appropriations bills offer Senate Republicans a vehicle to pass “riders”—

or nongermane amendments that prohibit an agency from using the bill’s funding

to “perform a certain action that the legislators oppose”—to restrict President

Obama’s executive branch actions (Location 146).

2.) The majoritarian House of Representatives allows for sweeping partisan progress,

but the filibuster nearly always makes any legislation that passes the Senate an

incremental bipartisan achievement (Rawls 88). Majority Leader McConnell’s

interest is to present vulnerable Senate Republicans—many in states that will vote

for a Democratic president in 2016—as politically palatable for independent

voters. McConnell must pass bipartisan legislation while manipulating procedure

to allow Senate Republicans to choose how conservative they wish to present

themselves to their respective state electorates.

McConnell understands how to manipulate Senate procedure to his advantage and

can exploit procedural rules to pursue his electoral and political goals in the 114th

Congress. Consider the 2014 negotiation during which then-Minority Leader McConnell

and Majority Leader Reid compromised to require fifty, rather than sixty, votes to raise

the debt ceiling. If Republicans opposed the measure, why lower the threshold for

passage? Occurring before the midterm elections, Republicans sought to distance

themselves from Democrats, while linking Democrats to an unpopular Democratic

president. McConnell’s logic was straightforward: Congress needed to raise the debt

ceiling to avoid default, and rather than force Republican colleagues to vote with

Democrats, a fifty vote threshold would allow Republicans facing a more conservative

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primary challenger to safely oppose the measure (Toobin). Senator Cruz, however,

objected and forced some Republican colleagues to cast a politically unpalatable vote to

support the debt ceiling increase (Toobin). This case demonstrates two realities of the

Senate: one maverick senator can alter the leadership’s agenda, and procedural rules can

cover or expose individual senators’ positions.

Current procedure requires that three-fifths of all senators—or 60 members—

affirmatively vote to invoke cloture and end a filibuster (Gold, location 139). One

proposal, suggested by Democratic Senators Jeff Merkley (Oregon) and Tom Udall (New

Mexico), would shift the burden for cloture votes; it would require a uniform 41-member

minority to start and sustain a filibuster rather than a 60-member majority to end one

(Klein). Currently, a Majority Leader wishing to invoke cloture on a filibuster started by

one errant senator must assemble a coalition of Democrats and Republicans to reach the

60-vote threshold. Shifting the responsibility to a unified 41-member minority means

that the minority must find 41 “no” votes, which some argue “would prevent the current

practice of delaying bills or nominees for months, holding the vote, and finding that there

were only a dozen or so senators who actually cared enough to block it” (Weigel).

Both Senate leaders had lukewarm reactions when Democrats proposed the 41-

member filibuster proposal in the 113th Congress, but Majority Leader McConnell would

see three benefits from pushing this reform. First, the reform benefits the majority party;

as Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein wrote, “The minority would have to supply the

41 votes required to keep a filibuster going, while the majority wouldn’t have to do much

of anything” (Klein). Second, McConnell could fulfill his campaign promise to make the

Senate ‘work’ again while forcing the same Democrats who proposed the reform to now

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block it—simply because Democrats no longer enjoy majority status. Even if McConnell

perceived a negative public response to this proposal, taking action around June 2015

would coincide larger news issues such as a major Supreme Court ruling and presidential

announcements. Finally, it forces more extreme Republicans like Ted Cruz to cast

difficult votes by affirmatively joining Democrats to sustain opposition to McConnell-

supported measures. It would tighten Majority Leader McConnell’s grip over the most

conservative members of his caucus, which McConnell could frame to Democrats as a

willingness to stand up to his “extremist wing.”

In fact, McConnell has an interest in using far-right members like Cruz as

bargaining tools with Senate Democrats. Some believe that far-right senators like Cruz

only caused McConnell significant headaches in the 113th Congress. Alec McGillis,

author of The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell, saw a different

dynamic where Cruz served as a useful bargaining chip for McConnell.11 Minority

Leader McConnell could use Cruz as leverage in negotiations on the fiscal cliff and debt

ceiling to say, ‘Look, you better give us what we want, or Ted Cruz will win.’ Now in

the majority, it behooves McConnell to create political costs for Cruz to pursue his own

agenda (through forcing him to join Democrats in opposition) and to use far-right

senators as leverage to negotiate with Democrats. As McConnell attempts to pursue

“incremental bipartisan” agreements on issues such as tax, trade and immigration, Cruz

can offer divergent amendments to pursue his own electoral interests. According to

MacGillis, “even an isolated Cruz can be a pain in the neck.”12

11 Personal conversation with Alec MacGillis, January 7, 201512 Personal conversation with Alec MacGillis, January 7, 2015

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Further, Majority Leader McConnell’s decision-making on the Keystone XL

Pipeline Approval Act (S.1), illustrates how McConnell can simultaneously pursue

electoral and policy goals through the open amendment process. Before becoming

Majority Leader, McConnell pledged to restore the Senate to regular order and allow

open amendments on legislation (Mimms). An open amendment process under regular

order allows minority members to propose amendments and, subsequently, forces

members of the majority party to vote on them. These minority amendments often force

the majority party to cast difficult votes and Harry Reid, as Majority Leader, often

restricted the minority’s ability to contribute to the amendment process by using his

privilege of first recognition to “fill the amendment tree” (Crespin). The practice “allows

the leader to…avoid the exposure of divisions within his party to public view” (Smith,

location 2862). This notion aligns with Cox and McCubbins’ (2007) ‘procedural cartel

model,’ in which the majority seeks party unity to “get votes on legislation it seeks to

pass and block votes on legislation it wants to avoid” (in Smith, location 4728).

A byproduct of this model, exemplified in the 113th Congress, is that voting

records become extremely partisan if only majority-proposed bills and amendments

receive votes. By not allowing controversial votes, Senate Democrats in the 2014-

midterm elections built partisan voting records and could not distinguish themselves from

unpopular national Democrats like Reid and President Obama. Exposed to criticism that

their voting records supported President Obama over 96 percent of the time, vulnerable

Democrats in purple states enjoyed no political cover (Lesniewski). 13

13 Roll Call continues, “Indeed, all of the most vulnerable Democrats voted with President Obama at least 96 percent of the time on the 120 votes on which Obama has urged a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote.”

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With the Keystone XL pipeline bill already poised for Senate passage,

accomplishing McConnell’s policy goal, McConnell manipulated the procedural process

to accomplish his electoral interests as well. In the first three weeks of 2015, Majority

Leader McConnell permitted 25 proposed amendments—10 more than Harry Reid

allowed throughout 2014—and Democrats proposed 16. McConnell boasted, “This is the

way the Senate ought to work,” fulfilling his campaign promise for a more open

amendment process (Drucker). According to The Wall Street Journal, McConnell even

allowed the Senate to “cast its first votes in at least eight years on climate change, putting

lawmakers on the record about the politically contentious issue” (Harder).

Two amendments in particular deserve further study. The first was proposed by

Democratic Senator Brian Schatz (Hawaii) to include language in the Keystone XL bill

that “climate change is real and human activity significantly contributes to climate

change” (Foran). All but five Senate Republicans voted against the measure; two of them

—Mark Kirk (Illinois) and Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire) will be running for re-election

in 2016 in blue states (Harder). Republican Senator John Hoeven (North Dakota)

proposed a second amendment that only removed the word “significantly” from the

previous amendment’s language, which received 15 Republican votes. The text “human

activity contributes to climate change” would have been included in the Keystone XL,

but Senators David Vitter (Louisiana) and Hoeven and switched to ‘No’ to kill the

amendment (Freedman). As David Drucker of the Washington Examiner explains,

permitting votes on Democratic proposals is a win-win-win decision for Republicans.

Drucker explains that the overall Republican-tilted bill passes, Republicans uphold their

campaign promise to “open up the Senate,” and blue-state Republicans have “an

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opportunity to vote with their states and show independence from their party.” In 2016,

Republicans must defend 24 of 34 Senate seats, many in states that Obama carried in

2012. By allowing votes on Democratic amendments, Senate Republicans can choose

how much they wish to align or distance their roll call voting from the Republican

establishment.

Assembling A Governing Coalition

One option for Majority Leader McConnell is to identify an informal, bipartisan

governing coalition for the 114th Congress. Assuming unanimous Republican support,

McConnell needs at least six Democrats to reach a sixty-vote supermajority; assuming

unanimous Democratic opposition, McConnell can only afford to lose three Republican

votes and still maintain an outright majority. Adding two members as a buffer for each

creates a thirteen-member coalition of eight Democrats and five Republicans.

The Keystone XL legislation, passed after extensive votes in an open amendment

process, was the first major legislation passed under Majority Leader McConnell’s

‘restored’ Senate. Therefore, to identify this coalition, I first analyzed the 48 distinct

votes taken on S. 1 (Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act), from the cloture motion to

proceed on 1/12/2015 to the motion on 3/4/2015 to override President Obama’s veto.

Second, I created individual variables that listed percentages of how often senator voted

with Majority Leader McConnell, Senator Cruz and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-

California). Feinstein, a stalwart and senior Democrat, served as a proxy for the

Democratic leader as she missed no votes during Minority Leader Reid’s absence.

Missed votes were coded as missing to create a true measure of McConnell support. This

controls for cases such as Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) who, when present, voted

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with McConnell on 96.1 percent of the time. Since Rubio missed 22 Keystone votes, this

number—left unchanged—would indicate that Rubio only voted with McConnell 52.1%

of the time.

Given the focus on the 2016 senatorial and presidential elections, I compared the

percent agreement with McConnell (the Republican proxy) and Feinstein (the Democratic

proxy) to the senator’s election year (2014, 2016 or 2018). Since independent Senators

Angus King (I-Maine) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) caucus with the Democratic

Party, I include them in the Democratic sample. I wanted to understand whether a

statistically significant relationship existed between a senator’s election and willingness

to vote with the majority leader. Two senators with re-elections in 2016, Barbara

Mikulski (D-Maryland) and Barbara Boxer (D-California), announced their retirement

and were not included in the 2016 sample (Lerner). The column ‘variation’ calculates the

difference in percent agreement with McConnell and Feinstein between the election years

that the party caucus was most and least likely to agree with them. Senate Democrats

facing reelection in 2018 were most likely to vote with Majority Leader McConnell

(19.25%); those elected in 2014 were least likely to vote with McConnell (12.82%), with

a total variation of 6.43%. Since some literature on the Senate suggests that senators

respond to electoral pressures only in the last year or two before re-election, additional

research is needed to prove that senators with 2018 re-elections are directly responding to

electoral pressures four years in advance.

% agreed with

Among Senate Democrats (n=44)Election Year

Mean Variation2014 2016 2018McConnell 12.82% 13.43% 19.25% 16.66% 6.43%Feinstein 97.25% 95.83% 89.87% 92.73% 7.38%% agreed with Among Senate Republicans (n=54)

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Election YearMean Variation2014 2016 2018

McConnell 90.90% 90.61% 90.58% 90.70% 0.32%Feinstein 11.23% 11.25% 9.41% 10.99% 1.84%

Overall, the average Republican agreed with their Majority Leader on 90.70% of

votes, while the average Democrat voted with McConnell—and presumably with the

Republican establishment—on 16.66% of votes.14 While Democrats agreed with their

leader’s position 2.02% more than Republicans agreed with McConnell, Democratic

support for Senator Feinstein saw a standard deviation 1.5 times that of Republicans.

When grouped by election year, Democratic support for their effective leader varied by

23 times more than Republican support for the Majority Leader. Senate Democrats were

5.67% more likely than Senate Republicans to vote with the opposing parties’ leader;

Democrats grouped by election year varied in their support for the opposing party at a

level five times that of Republicans (6.43% vs. 1.84%). These results suggest that

election year might have had some effect on Democratic support for McConnell on these

votes.

Did senators’ election year affect Democrats’ likelihood of supporting Majority

Leader McConnell on the Keystone XL legislation? While election year had no

statistically significant impact among Republicans, Democrats with re-elections in 2018

were, to a statistically significant degree (p-value=0.0231), more likely than Democrats

without a 2018 re-election to cross the aisle and vote with McConnell. Likewise, to a

statistically significant degree (p-value=0.0375), Democrats with re-elections in 2018

were less likely than Democrats without a 2018 re-election to vote with Senator Feinstein

and rank-and-file Democrats on a given Keystone vote.

14 Note: This reflects the mean, not median, statistic.

39

Further, Democrats elected in 2014 were less likely than Democrats not elected in

2014 to vote with McConnell (17.42% vs. 12.82%); a means-comparison t-test indicates

a strong but not quite statistically significant difference (p-value= 0.1201). One could

argue that Democratic senators’ likelihood to vote with McConnell reflects more on the

circumstances of their previous election than with their future one, or that Democrats

with elections in 2018 are more conservative than those elected in 2014 or 2016.

However, using Heritage Action score as a rough proxy for conservatism,15 a means-

comparison t-test shows no statistically significant relationship between Heritage Action

score and re-election year among Senate Democrats. Therefore, quantitative evidence

suggests that McConnell could target Democrats with 2018 elections in his electoral

strategy. Five of the six Democrats most likely to vote with McConnell—and 12 of the

14 most likely—have re-elections in 2018. Senators Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) and

Mark Warner (D-Virginia) are the other two. Bennet and Warner are both moderate

swing-state senators elected by narrow margins, winning by 1.2 percent and 0.8 percent,

respectively (Warner).

Especially since no similar effect exists for Republicans with an election in 2018

(p=0.4784), why might Democrats with 2018 re-elections be persuadable? First,

presidential voters are “younger, less affluent, and more diverse,” suggesting a more

Democratic electorate (Bouie). According exit polls conducted by the Wall Street

Journal in the two most recent midterm elections, voters are “older, whiter, wealthier, and

much more conservative than the public at large” (Bouie; WSJNewsGraphics).

Independent of who controls the Oval Office, evidence from the last two midterm

15 The correlation value between Heritage Action and percent agreement with Senator Cruz is .9298. The correlation value is .9278 for Senator McConnell.

40

elections suggests that 2018 Democrats should expect a more unfavorable election than

the presidential electorate that voted for them in 2012. Second, this effect reflects

Democratic confidence in the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary

Clinton. Assuming Clinton wins the presidency in 2016, Senate Democrats should

expect an unfavorable electorate in the 2018 midterm elections. Since President Harry

Truman’s first midterm election in 1946, the party of an elected first-term president has

lost an average of 2.3 Senate seats in the president’s first midterm election.16 17 Worse for

Democrats, the last five elected Democratic presidents lost an average of 5.2 seats,

including an average of seven between Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.18

Anticipating a Democratic presidential victory in 2016 and an unfavorable midterm in

2016, Senate Democrats might seek to distance themselves from a Democratic president

in the 2018 midterms. Overall, Majority Leader McConnell is well served to target

Democrats slated for re-election in 2018 in his informal governing coalition.

Election % Agreed with McConnell on KeystoneMANCHIN* 18 53.19%HEITKAMP* 18 52.08%MCCASKILL* 18 41.30%DONNELLY* 18 36.17%WARNER* 14 32.61%TESTER* 18 31.25%CARPER* 18 27.08%BENNET 16 27.08%CASEY* 18 22.92%KAINE 18 18.75%KLOBUCHAR 18 18.75%NELSON (FL) 18 14.58%HEINRICH 18 14.58%

16 Note: This does not include the 1966 midterm elections under President Lyndon Johnson, who became president upon President John Kennedy’s assassination.17 Original research using Mid-Term Election data from The American Presidency Project, found at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/mid-term_elections.php18 Ibid.

41

KING 18 14.58%

Majority Leader McConnell’s informal governing coalition should include these

eight Democrats: Joe Manchin (West Virginia), Heidi Heitkamp (North Dakota), Claire

McCaskill (Missouri), Joe Donnelly (Indiana), Mark Warner (Virginia), Jon Tester

(Montana), Tom Carper (Delaware), and Bob Casey (Pennsylvania). I explicitly choose

not to include Senators Michael Bennet and Tim Kaine for a few reasons. A January

2015 POLITICO exclusive on Hillary Clinton’s presumptive presidential campaign

identified Senators Bennet and Kaine as “dominating the early speculation” for Vice

President (Allen). Further, Michael Bennet will likely run for re-election in 2016 in

Colorado, a swing state that voted for President Obama in the last two presidential

elections but recently elected Republican Cory Gardner over incumbent Democrat Mark

Udall (Healy). The New York Times’ Jack Healy also reported after Gardner’s 2014

victory, “Ad after ad by Republicans and outside conservative groups declared that

[incumbent] Mr. Udall voted with the president 99 percent of the time.” If Republicans

seek to challenge Bennet in 2016 and employ a similar ‘Obama Yes-Man’ strategy to

defeat him, Majority Leader McConnell should not make Bennet appear more bipartisan

by including him in an informal governing coalition. Finally, while not included in the

eight-Democrat coalition, Senators Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota), Bill Nelson (Florida),

Martin Heinrich (New Mexico), and Angus King (Maine) are also persuadable

Democrats based on the 48 Keystone XL votes.

Which five Republicans should McConnell include in his governing coalition?

While election year did not appear to influence Republican agreement with McConnell

on Keystone, it is valuable to consider which Republicans were most and least likely to

42

back McConnell. Included here are the twelve most likely and thirteen least likely

Republicans to agree with McConnell on the Keystone XL legislation.

Most Likely to Agree with McConnell on Keystone XL legislation

Senator Election % Agreed with McConnellMORAN 16 100.00%RUBIO 16 96.15%CRAPO 16 95.83%SHELBY 16 95.83%RISCH 14 95.83%BOOZMAN 16 95.83%SCOTT 16 95.83%ISAKSON 16 95.83%PERDUE 14 95.83%ROBERTS 14 95.83%COTTON 14 95.83%

Least Likely to Agree with McConnell on Keystone XL Legislation, Compared to Agreement with McConnell in the 113th Congress

Senator Election% Agreed with

McConnell114th, Keystone

% Agreed with McConnell

113th Congress

How much more likely to support McConnell on

Keystone?

COLLINS 14 60.42% 59.36% 1.06%AYOTTE 16 60.42% 80.37% -19.95%

KIRK 16 75.00% 82.30% -7.30%ALEXANDER 14 77.08% 83.85% -6.77%

GRAHAM 14 77.14% 83.74% -6.60%GARDNER 14 85.42% N/A N/A

BURR 16 85.42% 87.77% -2.35%PAUL 16 85.42% 86.38% -0.96%

CORKER 18 87.50% 83.15% 4.35%HELLER 18 87.50% 82.89% 4.61%

PORTMAN 16 87.50% 85.67% 1.83%LEE 16 89.19% 84.86% 4.33%

CRUZ 18 89.36% 86.13% 3.23%Average among these

Senators N/A 80.57% 82.21% -2.04%

The firebrand Senator Ted Cruz voted with McConnell less frequently than 40

Republicans and was the 13th least likely to support McConnell. While Heritage Action

43

scores Cruz as 95 of 100 (trailing only Utah Senator Mike Lee as the most conservative

senator), Cruz was less likely than the more moderate Arizona Senator John McCain

(score of 49) and more likely than Rand Paul (score of 93) to vote with the majority

leader on Keystone.

Further, based on the Keystone votes, Majority Leader McConnell’s informal

governing coalition should include Republican Senators Susan Collins (Maine), Kelly

Ayotte (New Hampshire), Mark Kirk (Illinois), Lamar Alexander (Tennessee), and

Lindsey Graham (South Carolina). Four of these five showed significant drop-offs in

support for McConnell on Keystone relative to their support in the 113th Congress. All

supported McConnell on less than 80% of votes (the average was 90.72% among

Republicans).

How should Senator Cruz factor into McConnell’s calculus? For example, while

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul agreed with McConnell on over 85% of Keystone votes, he

agreed with Cruz on 10.33% more votes than McConnell—the largest swing towards

Cruz of any senator. If McConnell is concerned about Cruz’s influence, McConnell

should court Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham (8.15%), and Mike Lee (8.03%) into his

governing calculus. However, Cruz may no longer be a perceived threat to Republicans

within the Senate either due to Cruz’s belief that working through the Senate serves his

presidential ambitions or to his diminished influence as a non-senior majority senator

without minority procedural tactics (Chabot).

For example, Cruz vehemently opposed President Obama’s executive action,

announced in November 2014, to offer temporary legal status to millions of illegal

immigrants (Ehrenfreund). Cruz coined the action “executive amnesty,” and in a

44

December 2014 press release proposed two constitutional means of opposition: the

Senate should “halt confirmations for non-national security positions” and use “the power

of the purse” (Cruz Press Release). Republicans pursued the first by delaying a

nomination vote on Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, and attempted the second

by refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unless the Democrats

removed funding for President Obama’s immigration executive action. However, one

freshman senator, speaking anonymously, stated, “I look at the freshmen, and I don’t see

a lot of Ted Cruzes” (Bolton). As Brookings Institution scholar Sarah Binder argued in a

National Public Radio interview, a Cruz-led “coalition of one or five…can gum up the

works for a little bit of time, but it’s very hard to grind the Senate to a halt” (Chang).

While Cruz called Lynch’s nomination “dangerous,” he conceded that the

decision to consider Lynch’s nomination is one “the majority leader is going to have to

make” (Lesniewski). Rather than delay the DHS bill with President Obama’s executive

action or fight Loretta Lynch’s confirmation, Cruz settled for a verbal stand against the

actions (Dennis). Given Cruz’s interest for Republicans to take strong positions rather

than govern before 2016, he cares more about being “right,” than about “winning” and

“losing.” As Mayhew (1974) explains, “We can all point to…instances in which

congressmen seem to have gotten in trouble by being on the wrong side in a roll call vote,

but who can think of one where a member got into trouble by being on the losing side?”

(118). Cruz will likely seek non-institutional means to raise his national profile; as

mentioned earlier, Cruz has little interest in marketing the Republican Party as a

‘governing party’ before 2016. For example, Elizabeth Drew (1973) discussed how the

ego that motivates members to run for Congress makes them unwilling to accommodate

45

their views.19 Soon, lawmakers “come to learn” that a “thumping speech is more likely to

attract the attention of the press galleries…than is quiet work in the corridors to change

national policy.”20

Perhaps Ted Cruz realizes how Marco Rubio’s legislative efforts to promote

bipartisan immigration legislation actually setback his presidential campaign by

potentially alienating Republican primary and caucus voters. It would make sense to

seek power through non-institutional means while taking a low-cost stand on

immigration. Therefore, the important negotiation exists between Cruz’s non-

institutional influence and Majority Leader McConnell’s responsibility to govern. If

Cruz continued to be a major thorn in McConnell’s side, the majority leader might co-op

potential Cruz allies such as Mike Lee to give them something to lose by voting with

Cruz over the establishment. At least on the DHS immigration bill and Loretta Lynch

nomination, Cruz’s actions do not warrant Lee’s inclusion in McConnell’s informal

governing coalition.

Senator

Agree with Cruz Keystone 114th

% Agree with Cruz - % Agree w/McConnellKeystone 114th Rank*

Agree with Cruz 113th Congress

% Agree with Cruz vs. - Agree w/McConnell113th Congress Difference

Change in Rank from 113th Congress+

ROBERTS 93.62% -2.22% 5 89.79% 0.49% 2.71% 5ENZI 91.49% -2.26% 18 90.13% 0.12% 2.38% -9CRAPO 93.62% -2.22% 5 90.43% 3.97% 6.19% 3SESSIONS 91.49% -2.13% 18 90.50% 3.70% 5.83% -11INHOFE 93.62% -2.22% 5 90.57% 0.38% 2.60% 1JOHNSON 91.49% -2.23% 18 90.89% 2.65% 4.88% -13RISCH 93.62% -2.22% 5 91.83% 3.79% 6.01% -1PAUL 95.74% 10.33% 4 92.61% 6.22% 4.11% -1SCOTT 93.62% -2.22% 5 93.80% 5.40% 7.62% -3LEE 97.22% 8.03% 1 94.24% 9.38% 1.35% 0

* This comes from a ranking of all Senators according from most (1) to least (99) likely to vote with Senator Cruz on the 48 Keystone XL votes. + Negative (red) indicates lower agreement with Cruz

Compromise among Party Activists

19 Found in Mayhew, The Electoral Connection (pg. 118)20 Ibid.

46

I focused until now on Republican senators’ willingness to compromise, and wish

to compare Republican and Democratic lawmakers’ likelihood of crossing the aisle to

party activists’ willingness to compromise. To accomplish this, I employ the 2012

Convention Delegate Study, a survey sent to all delegates to the 2012 Democratic and

Republican national conventions.21 I performed two analyses to understand party

activists’ willingness to compromise, especially among Republicans.22 The first asked

whether one’s party affected one’s willingness to compromise or stand firm with the

party regardless of electoral success. The second looked within the Republican Party,

asking whether activists who supported a certain candidate were more or less willing to

compromise with opposing views.

The first question asked to what extent delegates agreed with the statement, “The

party should play down some issues if it will improve the chances of winning.” I

performed a means-comparison t-test that compared activists who supported each of the

eight Republican presidential candidates relative to all other activists; for instance, if 500

activists were polled, it would compare the 50 who indicated support for former

Congressman Ron Paul to the 450 who supported other candidates. Compared to survey

respondents who indicated support for other candidates, supporters of former

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney were the only group that, to agree a statistically

significant level (p-value=0.0000), were more likely to agree that a party should play

down some issues to “win.” The Romney mean was 2.982 on a four-point (“strongly

21 Description for the Convention Delegate Study found at http://rooneycenter.nd.edu/assets/21996/layman/.22 See Layman, and Carsey (2015) for details on the methodology and response rates of the 2012 Convention Delegate Study. Layman, Geoffrey C., and Thomas M. Carsey. 2015. “Is Conflict Still Extending? American Party Polarization in the Twenty-First Century.” Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago.

47

disagree” to “strongly agree”) scale, meaning that the mean Romney supporter “agreed”

with the statement. Supporters of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (mean =

2.471, p-value=0.0823) and former libertarian Congressman Ron Paul (mean=2.11, p-

value=0.000) however, saw statistically significant lower levels of support relative to

supporters of other candidates.23

A second question asked respondents how they felt on a seven-point sliding scale

ranging from “1: elected officials should stand up for their principles no matter what” to

“7: Elected officials should compromise with their opponents in order to get things done

for the country.” Serving as the most directly related proxy for an activists’ willingness

to compromise, the question revealed similar results to the first. On average, Democrats

were more willing to compromise than Republicans; the mean Democrat rated 4.782,

while the mean Republican rated 3.50. These results were statistically significant, with a

means-comparison t-test resulting in a p-value of 0.000.

Ron Paul (p-value=0.0000) and Rick Santorum (p-value=0.0122) supporters were

uncompromising to a statistically significant degree. On the other side, Mitt Romney

supporters (p=0.0000) and those who supported “someone else” (p-value=0.0190) were,

to a statistically significant degree, more likely to view compromise as necessary.

To determine whether affiliations with certain groups influenced one’s

willingness to compromise with other beliefs, I compared a 0-100 feeling thermometer

for the following groups with respondents’ ‘willingness to compromise’ adapted to a 0 to

1 scale. A rating of ‘1’ advocates for compromise to get things done, while ‘0’ urged

elected officials to “stand up for their principles no matter what.” A negative coefficient

meant that respondents with a greater affinity for that group were less willing to

23 Analysis conducted with means-comparison t-tests.

48

compromise, while greater affinity for groups with positive coefficients were linked to

respondents more willing to “compromise with their opponents in order to get things

done for the country.”

Group Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t|Christian Fundamentalists -0.0012618 0.000568 -2.22 0.027Labor Unions 0.0012467 0.0005477 2.28 0.023Big Business 0.002678 0.0004956 5.4 0Tea Party -0.0039289 0.0005125 -7.67 0Occupy Wall Street -0.000957 0.0004826 -1.98 0.048Mormons 0.0013868 0.0004652 2.98 0.003_cons 0.4641506 0.0627272 7.4 0

While not necessarily an indicator for affiliation with the group (i.e. one can be

favorable to Mormons without being one), those more favorable to Christian

fundamentalists, the Tea Party, and, to a lesser degree, Occupy Wall Street, were less

willing to compromise. Those more favorable to labor unions, big business, and

Mormons were more willing to compromise to “get things done.”

49

V. A Negotiation Strategy for Majority Leader McConnell

Given the non-institutional influence that Ted Cruz will exert on the Republican

Party as he runs for president, how can Majority Leader McConnell best use a governing

coalition to pursue his electoral and policy interests in the 114th Congress?

First, non-senior Republican Senators, without the minority’s institutional tools,

will influence the Republican Party through outside means. Ted Cruz in the 113th

Congress showed how a freshman senator could use procedural tactics such as the

filibuster to become the leading “anti-Obamacare senator.” Assuming that an open letter

addressed to the leaders of Iran as outside the normal role of a U.S. Senator, Republican

Tom Cotton (R-AR), a freshman majority senator in the 114th Congress, chose a non-

institutional tactic to emerge as a “leading GOP national security hawk” (Sullivan).

Cotton’s interest was to impede President Obama’s ongoing negotiations to reform Iran’s

nuclear program, whereas Cruz’s was to defund President Obama’s signature legislation.

To pursue his interest to defund “Obamacare,” Cruz chose the Senate floor as a

battleground, where he spoke in September 2013 for 21 hours. Not even a filibuster,

Politico noted that the speech was “all over [from the beginning] save for the theatrics”

(Everett). Cruz established himself as the leading Obamacare opponent on the Senate

floor. On the other hand, Cotton published online an “Open Letter to the Leaders of the

Islamic Republic of Iran,” signed by 47 Republicans, warning that any agreement reached

would be subject to congressional review and could be revoked by the next president

“with the stroke of a pen” (Cotton). The Washington Post noted that Cotton was

emerging as a leading foreign policy hawk through “harsh rhetoric and confrontational

tactics” (Sullivan). The freshman majority senator opted not to use the Senate floor to

50

achieve his policy goals; rather, he used his Senate position to exert non-institutional

influence on the negotiation process. Overall, both Cruz and Cotton quickly emerged as

leading freshman senators on the national stage, but Cotton, as a non-senior majority

senator, worked outside the Senate rather than through it to achieve his policy interests.

Second, and perhaps given his status as a non-senior majority senator and

presidential candidate, Cruz views working as a Senate insider as antithetical to his

electoral goals. Aligned with the “Career politician versus American people” narrative,

Cruz’s presidential strategy is to run against the Senate. Cruz had the 3rd worst roll call

vote attendance record during the first three months of the 114th Congress, “skipping

votes on aid for Israel, student loans and human trafficking, among others” (Wright). He

attended three of the 16 public hearings held by the Senate Armed Services Committee—

ten less than the average committee member (Wright, 3/31/15; Blade and Kim). Further,

Cruz missed 14 of the 57 votes on the Senate’s budget, the most of any senator, and was

one of only two Republican senators to oppose the Senate GOP budget. However, Cruz

chose not to fight and the budget will never become law, making his opposition largely

symbolic (Blade and Kim). And when Cruz did choose to use his position as “Senator

Cruz” rather than “Candidate Cruz” on a fast-track proposal for the Trans-Pacific

Partnership (TPP), he did so on the heels of growing reports of his neglect to attend key

votes and Armed Services hearings. Moreover, Cruz took his fight to the editorial page

of the Wall Street Journal—not to the Senate floor—to make his case (Cruz and Paul).

Despite the recent influx of Republican senators from the 2014 midterms, Cruz still only

ranks 41st in seniority within his party and ostensibly no longer considers the Senate floor

the most useful battleground to exert influence.

51

Third, while Cruz will likely pursue his goals outside the Senate, Majority Leader

McConnell still must use the Senate to compensate for Cruz, whose electoral strategy

relies on “catering to conservative voters, who tend to dominate primaries” (Bland).

Cruz bases his electoral strategy on the premise that “roughly half of born-again

Christians are not voting”; a Republican appeal must therefore avoid the “mushy middle”

that led to the failed campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney (Gehrke;

Goldmacher). McConnell should seek to counterbalance Cruz, who will likely pull

Republican presidential candidates—and by extension the party itself—to the right. As

Abramowitz (2015) notes, “The 2016 electorate will be considerably younger, less white,

and almost certainly more Democratic than the 2014 electorate.” McConnell has the

choice to use the Senate to present a different image of the Republican Party. However,

the influx of “younger voters, racial and ethnic minorities including Latinos, and

unmarried women” into the presidential electorate forces McConnell to present

alternative policy views for Republicans seeking to present themselves as more moderate

in states such as Illinois (Mark Kirk), Wisconsin (Ron Johnson), Pennsylvania (Pat

Toomey), Ohio (Rob Portman), and New Hampshire (Kelly Ayotte) (Abramowitz;

Trygstad).

Ted Cruz’s campaign strategy separates the Republican Party into four lanes—

establishment, Tea Party (including conservative activists), evangelicals, and libertarians

(Noonan). According to James Hohmann and Alex Isenstadt of Politico, advisors seek

“to establish Cruz as the first choice of tea partyers and become at least the second choice

of evangelicals.” This explains why Cruz announced his candidacy at Liberty University

rather than in Texas (Noonan). If Cruz can reach social conservatives before former

52

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and 2012 Republican runner-up Rick Santorum,

Cruz might be able to “create a base on the right end of the party.” Overall, this strategy

allows Cruz to emerge as the “main conservative opponent to whoever emerges as the

establishment candidate.” Cruz’s strategy relies on “millions of courageous

conservatives all across America rising up together” and in “millions of people of faith all

across America coming out to the polls and voting our values” (Dionne). Dubious as a

general election strategy, it might be successful in the Republican primary. Using data

from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), Washington Post

columnists Robert Lupton and Christopher Hare found that “Cruz is quite ideologically

in-line with Republican voters [in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire,

South Carolina, and Florida]. In fact, his estimated ideological score is…more liberal

than…the median Republican in Iowa, South Carolina, and Florida” (Dionne). Ranked

by DW-NOMINATE score, Cruz was the fourth-most conservative senator in the 113th

Congress and seemingly too extreme for the Republican Party, but Lupton and Hare

found that Jeb Bush’s score was “to the left of at least 70 percent of Republican voters”

in the four early states (Lupton and Hare; Voteview). However, this is the score that

Bush would have received had he been in Congress, which he is not.

At the very least, outflanking his Republican rivals will force the entire field right.

For example, in late March 2015, Cruz swiftly and unconditionally supported Indiana’s

Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) despite homosexual opposition. Presidential

frontrunner and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush initially offered similar support.

However, Bush later shifted his original position to support a revised bill that excluded

53

discrimination based on sexual orientation—a more establishment stance (Haberman and

Goel).

Given these realities and Ted Cruz’s campaign strategy to outflank the right, how

should Majority Leader McConnell pursue his electoral and policy interests? McConnell

has pledged private support to junior Kentucky Senator Rand Paul for president in 2016,

but will not likely campaign actively for any candidate. McConnell should use the Senate

as a counterweight to a Republican Party that will likely shift to the right during the

primaries (Raju and French). McConnell’s optimal strategy exposes candidates he

perceives as incapable of winning a general election, while giving the establishment

candidate more moderate policies to champion after winning the primary. Consider how

the average voter in the first four primary states is more ideologically aligned with Cruz

than with Bush. To win the primaries, Bush and other establishment candidates will

likely have to adopt (or at least pay lip service to) more conservative positions. The Tea

Party and conservative activists will likely criticize Bush for his more moderate positions

on the Common Core education standards and immigration reform (Enten). With

McConnell’s bipartisan legislation as an establishment counterweight to the activist-

driven Republican primaries, a Republican nominee hoping to appeal to the general

electorate can champion the Senate legislation as an example of bipartisan reform that

could become law under a Republican president. For example, a Republican presidential

candidate adopting the position during the primaries that ‘human activity does not

significantly contribute to climate change’ could, as the nominee, tell voters that he or she

would sign the bipartisan Keystone XL bill into law as president. Both Keystone XL and

belief in anthropogenic climate change are environmental stances, but it is far more likely

54

that a moderate Democrat or independent will support Keystone XL than reject

anthropogenic climate change.

Overall, since Senator Cruz is now ‘Candidate Cruz,’ Majority Leader McConnell

cannot directly negotiate with Cruz on the Senate floor. Assuming that McConnell does

not view Cruz as an acceptable nominee for the general election, Cruz’s presidential

ambition clashes with McConnell’s interests to elect a Republican president and to

present policies that make the Republican Party appear “warm and fuzzy” to the

American public. McConnell will have little impact on the Republican presidential

primary—but he does have an interest in protecting vulnerable swing-state Republican

senators in Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and others. Conceding

that a crowded Republican primary and activist primary electorate will drive frontrunners

Jeb Bush and Scott Walker to the right, McConnell should primarily focus on passing

bipartisan legislation that a Republican can champion after winning the nomination.

Rooting the Senate schedule in legislation tailored to the eight Democrats and five

Republicans in McConnell’s informal governing coalition achieves this interest.

If Jeb Bush receives the nomination after a primary that likely forced him farther

right, on each issue stance Bush can choose to either double down on his primary position

or champion ‘bipartisan reform’ pending or passed by a Republican-controlled in the

Senate. Taking Keystone as an example, the Republican nominee can state, ‘If elected,

only I will sign the bipartisan Keystone XL legislation.’ At worst, the Democratic

nominee will be forced to the right to adopt a similar stance. Assuming that Senator

Rubio’s bipartisan legislative work undermines his ability to win the Republican

55

nomination but would benefit him in a general election, the nominee can adopt bipartisan

positions when it suits his or her electoral interests.

If McConnell focuses legislation that appeals to this thirteen-member bipartisan

coalition, he will stake out establishment positions on legislation that a Republican

presidential nominee can adopt in a general election to distinguish him or herself from a

Democratic challenger. Through support from at least some of the eight Democrats in

McConnell’s coalition, the Republican nominee counters the public perception that

Republicans are unwilling to govern. Further, none of the eight Democrats in

McConnell’s coalition have reelections in 2016 (seven will be reelected in 2018 and one,

Warner, was re-elected in 2014). Therefore, McConnell does not explicitly offer political

cover to a Democrat such as Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, who seeks re-election in

2016.

Why is this strategy necessary? After Mitt Romney secured a coveted

endorsement from then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush during the 2012 Republican

presidential primary, senior campaign advisor Eric Fehrnstrom now-infamously

discussed how Romney would change his strategy in the general election. Fehrnstrom

remarked, “I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes…It’s

almost like an Etch a Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again”

(Cohen).

McConnell presents the Republican nominee with a menu of bipartisan issue

stances, from which the nominee can choose a few. The candidate can maintain some

non-establishment iconservative stances, while ‘starting over’ by adopting more moderate

stances on other issues in the general election. Because the Republican Party has already

56

staked out a position on the issue, few will question the Republican nominee agreeing

with the GOP position in Congress, especially one with bipartisan support. Moreover,

the nominee could invoke Ronald Reagan in response to far-right opposition, quoting

Reagan’s notion of compromise: “I have always figured that a half a loaf is better than

none…I have not retreated from what was our original purpose…I [will] come back and I

[will] ask for more the next time around” (Rickert). In sum, McConnell uses the Senate

as an establishment counterbalance, creating a menu of bipartisan and actionable issue

stances for an eventual Republican nominee.

57

VI. Conclusion

On April 14, the Senate passed a “historic” $210 billion Medicare reform bill to

end a two-decade-old practice known as the “doc fix” (Frieden; Sullivan and Ferris). Of

the $210 billion, only $70 billion was paid for. Calling it a “milestone for physicians,

and for seniors and people with disabilities,” President Obama stated that he “will be

proud to sign it into law” (Sullivan and Ferris ). Majority Leader McConnell boasted,

“It’s another reminder of a new Republican Congress that’s back to work.” Minority

Leader Reid and Senate Democrats offered amendments that addressed abortion language

and extended a two-year reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program to

four years. Both Democratic amendments failed (DeBonis). The final Senate tally on the

$210 billion “doc fix” legislation was 92 to 8. The eight outliers objecting, for the most

part, to the fact that the legislation was not paid for. Senator Ted Cruz was one of the

eight. Cruz released in a statement that the “doc fix,” which the Congressional Budget

Office estimates will add $141 billion to the deficit through 2025, must be “fully paid

for,” further lamenting that the legislation “institutionalizes and expands Obamacare

policies that harm patients and their doctors while adding roughly half a trillion dollars to

our long term debt within two decades” (DeBonis). Despite some fanfare from “Ted

Cruz & Co” (a Washington Post headline), McConnell got what a wanted, a long-term fix

to a long-term problem, with overwhelming bipartisan support.

As Senator Cruz takes his fight from the Senate to the presidential campaign trail,

meeting prospective voters in Iowa and New Hampshire while missing votes and

committee meetings, Majority Leader McConnell appears to have found a path to making

the 114th Congress more productive than the previous Democratic-controlled Senate.

58

While McConnell controls the Senate—and to some extent Republicans’ ability to

maintain control of Congress—his challenge is to effectively shape the Republican Party

from the sidelines in the 2016 presidential election. McConnell’s role can be to

triangulate the eventual Republican nominee, fresh from wooing conservative activists,

towards a menu of bipartisan issue stances to selectively adopt in the general election.

The Republican nominee chooses ready-made bipartisan legislation to champion in a

general election, showing he or she is capable of governing without being labeled a “flip-

flopper,” while standing firm on his or her beliefs on other issue positions. With a tacit

endorsement of junior Kentucky Senator Rand Paul for the Republican nomination,

McConnell must influence the Republican Party without choosing its nominee. Watching

from the sidelines during the first three quarters of the presidential contest, McConnell

has an opportunity to enter the game in the fourth quarter and influence the general

election. The Republican nominee can win and, more importantly for McConnell, sign

legislation passed by the Senate starting in 2017.

59

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Service, Library of Congress (November 10, 1983)Print.Bade, Rachael, and Seung M. Kim. "Parties Play Post ‘vote-a-Rama’ Gotcha Game." POLITICO. April 5

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