He’s never going to stop, is he?

Peter King: I Did My Best to Fight the Cruz Crazies — Daily Beast

In the final minutes before the vote early Monday evening, Rep. Pete King stood at the back rail on the floor of the House, watching the scoreboard and still hoping there was a chance to stop the madness.

But every time he spoke to a fellow Republican representative who seemed ready to join him in averting a government shutdown, House Speaker John Boehner would have a quiet word with the waverer.

“I did my bit, and then I saw Boehner talking to them,” King says.

King was by one of the 20 locations where a member can vote. He saw a possible supporter who was standing nearby instead go to a more distant voting station.

“When you see a guy walk away to vote someplace else, you know how he’s going,” King says.[…]

At the same time, the “Ted Cruz Republicans,” as King called them, had been consistently disloyal. The present crisis had only come about because the Cruz crazies had refused to go along with Boehner’s original plan. Boehner had figured on sending legislation to the Senate that would allow it to fund the government even as it refused to pass an essentially symbolic measure defunding Obamacare.

Just two weeks ago, Boehner and House Majority leader Eric Cantor had spoken eloquently against triggering a government shutdown. The whole idea had been for the Republicans to make a statement without hurting anybody. That was not good enough for the Cruz wing, which was bent on undoing a law that had been passed by Congress, signed by the president, upheld by the Supreme Court, and essentially reaffirmed by the electorate in a presidential election.

“It goes against the whole sprit of the Constitution,” King says of the effort to undo Obamacare.