As Texas Sen. Ted Cruz fueled the 2016 campaign rumors during a visit to Iowa over the weekend, speaking at the Reagan Dinner in Des Moines and hunting with Iowa Rep. Steve King, former presidential candidate Rick Santorum said he thinks Cruz’s efforts to defund Obamacare hurt the GOP more than it helped the party.
Only 28 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of the Republican Party, according to the latest Gallup poll, taken after Sen. Ted Cruz’s 21-hour speech and the subsequent government shutdown. (Getty Images)
“In the end, he did more harm,” former Sen. Santorum, R-Penn, said on Sunday’s Meet the Press. “I think it was not his objective. I think his objective was a laudable one, I don’t think he did a good job in planning it out. It’s one thing to have a goal, it’s another thing to have a plan to get you to that goal.”
Santorum stopped short of saying Cruz was the face of the Republican party — although Cruz was one of the most notable names involved in this month’s government shutdown and the fight to defund the Affordable Care Act.
“I think he’s a face. I think there isn’t any, unlike the Democratic party, which has a leader, it has the President, there isn’t a leader in the Republican party right now. That’s part of the problem. That’s part of the mess and the confusion,” Santorum said. “But that’s always the way it is with a party out of power, they have lots of different faces and those faces, as we’ve seen, they come and they go.”
Despite speaking against the Affordable Care Act for 21 hours on the Senate floor in September, Cruz did not delay the Senate vote to reopen the government and keep funding for the healthcare law in mid-October.