Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz (File photo)
On Wednesday former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison never mentioned her successor – Ted Cruz – by name, but she blasted his attempts to derail the U.S. government by attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“I think that most Republicans wanted to negotiate on the issue of spending and the debt and the deficit,” she said during a brief interview at the Omni Hotel in Dallas, where we ran into the former senator having lunch. “I think a few people threw in an issue that you could not win. It was absolutely clear you could not win it. And as I’ve said, I was voting on Christmas Eve two years ago against that bill. I did everything I could, and so did all the Republicans in Congress — every single one.”
She went on to call the fight against Obamacare “a mistaken strategy,” and blamed Republican leadership for not getting the party back on track.
“The leaders tried to lead the conference in the right direction, and if they hadn’t been hijacked we would have been negotiating on what we should have been negotiating on and made progress on the real capability to succeed in lowering the debt and the deficit. Furthermore, Obamacare is falling of its own weight,” she said. “We didn’t need to do a kamikaze mission on that, because it was taking care of itself … because it’s not working. I am very glad we’re not going to have a default. That’s a minimal standard to clear, and we cleared it. But, honestly, I think the Republicans have learned you cant have a few outliers hijack what the leaders are trying to do.”
Around 10 p.m. the House is expected to vote on the Senate’s deal to reopen government and avert a U.S. debt default. Cruz, who pushed for concessions over Obamacare as a condition of keeping the government running, won’t stand in the way of the deal.
The likely resolution comes on the day the Houston Chronicle ran an editorial making the statewide rounds: “Why we miss Kay Bailey Hutchison.” The reason: She’s not Ted Cruz.
“I was very flattered” by the editorial, Hutchison said. “I’ve had a few people send it to me. I wasn’t expecting anything like that. People say they miss me — I hear it all the time — but it was surprising. And what was especially touching was where they said that while I worked for the country, I never forgot about Texas.”
Hutchison was asked if the shutdown was a distraction for her party or something far more detrimental.
“I think most things that happen, even when they’re wrong, can be overcome with a more positive, united effort,” she said. “I can’t say how this will all play out. I do believe Obamacare is going to be an issue in the 2014 election, and I believe it will be positive for Republicans. And I don’t think we need to throw up any more red flags on it, because it’s a red flag in of itself.”
The simple fact is, she said, “we negotiated on the wrong issue on the first place. And I am not blaming [U.S. Sen.] Mitch McConnell or Speaker John Boehner. I think that was always in Mitch’s sights. His biggest issue is addressing this enormous debt, and he fought the good fight on Obamacare; Boehner too. I don’t think we needed to throw that into this mix. We should have been negotiating on how we’re going to cut spending responsibly, and that starts with entitlements.”