Who do you like...

As Cruz gains, GOP senators rally for Rubio 

The idea of Cruz as the nominee makes fellow GOP senators shudder.

By Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim

Ted Cruz has built his Senate career and presidential campaign on his willingness to stick it to the Republican establishment. And now that he’s gaining momentum in the primary, his many GOP nemeses in Congress are returning the favor by quietly coalescing behind Marco Rubio.

Senior Republican senators who’ve clashed with Cruz for years have had nothing but nice things to say about Rubio even as he’s dissed — and largely ditched — his day job in the Capitol. Just this month, Rubio has racked up endorsements from nine members of Congress, compared with two for early GOP front-runner Jeb Bush. More House endorsements for Rubio are set to roll out in December, according to campaign sources, and several GOP senators said privately they expect their colleagues to get behind Rubio once the GOP field thins.

The movement toward Rubio appears to be as much about anxiety over the possibility of Cruz going up against Hillary Clinton as it is affection for the Florida senator. The idea of Cruz as the nominee is enough to send shudders down the spines of most Senate Republicans.

Mainstream elected Republicans now see Cruz as a bigger threat than Donald Trump or Ben Carson to clinch the nomination — but equally damaging to their party’s chances of winning the White House and keeping the Senate next fall. Rubio would be a much stronger general election standard bearer, they believe.

“Marco is a true next-generation conservative,” said Steve Daines (R-Mont.), one of three senators who endorsed Rubio in November. “Every time there’s a debate, his stock goes up.”

Cruz winning the nomination "could happen with the angry situation we have out there” among the GOP electorate, said one Republican senator who hasn't endorsed in the race but does not want Cruz.

Rubio's GOP colleagues are looking to exploit what they see as Rubio's advantage on national security in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks. They're heaping praise on Rubio's hawkish foreign policy views and panning Cruz’s attempt to find middle ground on national security. Asked about Rubio’s attacks on Cruz’s votes for the USA Freedom Act, which scaled back federal surveillance authorities, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas replied: “It’s always fair to question votes and hold people accountable.”

As for Cruz’s attempt to stake out a centrist position on national security between the party’s hawkish and libertarian poles, Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) said: “I don’t think you can split that baby."

“Candidates running for national office who are articulating strong, firm, decisive positions that are well-thought-out are going to have an advantage,” said No. 3 Senate Republican John Thune of South Dakota. Rubio, he added, is “well positioned to make the arguments.”

Cornyn, Thune and Coats have not endorsed in the presidential primary, and lawmakers interviewed for this story said many senior Republicans do not want to embarrass long-shot presidential hopeful Lindsey Graham by endorsing Rubio while the South Carolina senator is in the race. They’re also aware that endorsements from top GOP lawmakers at this point in the primary wouldn’t help Rubio’s cause with the Republican base.

Cruz scoffed at the notion that Rubio is more electable, telling POLITICO that that’s precisely the logic that paved the way for Democrats to win five of the past six popular votes for the White House.

“Democrats also told Republicans Bob Dole was more electable, Democrats also told the press John McCain was more electable, Democrats also told the press Mitt Romney was more electable,” Cruz said. “Then the Democrats were quite happy to go to their inauguration balls."

Cruz predicted that millions of blue-collar Democrats would rally behind him in a general election, like they did with Ronald Reagan three decades ago. Rubio's earlier support for comprehensive immigration reform — or a “massive amnesty plan,” in Cruz's words — would preclude that kind of crossover appeal, the Texan said.

But congressional Republicans say the truest indicator of Rubio’s strength is the abuse he’s getting from Democrats. They’ve been pounding him daily over missed votes and briefings, while dissecting his policy plans. Cruz, by comparison, has been getting kid-glove treatment, to the extent Democrats mention him at all in opposition dumps from the party apparatus and outside liberal groups.

Democrats for two years have held up Cruz as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, dubbing him "Speaker Cruz" after he prodded former Speaker John Boehner into a 2013 battle over Obamacare that shut down the federal government. Just this month, Democrats annoyed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by insinuating he had agreed to take up a hard-line immigration bill heavily touted by Cruz. The idea that McConnell would take cues from Cruz after the Texas senator’s withering criticisms of the GOP leader was perceived by Republicans as a subtle Democratic attempt at boosting Cruz.

Meanwhile, in separate interviews with POLITICO and The Huffington Post last month, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ripped Rubio for his chronic Senate absences and called on him to resign his Senate seat. Rubio's political ambitions, Reid said, reminded him of disgraced former senator and 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards.

“Obviously, Marco was bitten by the national limelight like John Edwards,” Reid said in the POLITICO interview. “Marco Rubio, somehow someone told him, ‘Why don’t you run for president?’ OK, great idea. So he just walked away from the Senate. He has been a nonentity here.”

Asked this month why he isn’t unleashing on Cruz in similar fashion, Reid replied: “I haven’t heard Cruz talk about how he didn’t like the Senate.”

Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer of New York, who’s poised to become the next Democratic Senate leader, told CNN early this month that Rubio’s “fingerprints are all over” a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Schumer then told The New York Times that “Senator Cruz was always against the path to citizenship, and Senator Rubio was for it.” Both remarks were an attempt to hurt Rubio with conservatives and could have easily come out of Cruz’s mouth.

Rubio's backers, for their part, say Democrats are trying to meddle in the GOP primary, adopting the strategy they've used in recent Senate elections of propping up unelectable Republican candidates in primaries in the hopes of facing a weaker general election opponent.

Still, “the way Clinton's allies obsess about Marco must mean we're doing something right," said Rubio spokesman Alex Conant.

The Republican senators who see Rubio as a stronger general election candidate have ample reasons to worry about Cruz outmaneuvering their man. Cruz is closing in on Donald Trump in Iowa, according to recent polls and the Texan has the financial heft to endure a drawn-out nomination battle. Cruz also believes he also has the upper hand on immigration, a key issue for primary voters and Rubio's Achilles' heel.

But Senate Republicans who are subtly rallying behind Rubio are also thinking about their own power. With the GOP defending a slim Senate majority next year, lawmakers want a nominee who can win over moderate voters in battleground states. They don’t say explicitly that means Rubio, but in a two-man race, their preference isn't hard to detect.

“Marco would have more reach to independents” especially in key swing states like Ohio and Florida against Clinton, said a Republican senator who has not endorsed in the race but gushed with praise for Rubio. “Democrats I know don’t like the matchup.”