former texas senator ted cruz s shutdown strategy are taking aim at incumbents like minority leader mitch mcconnell, the target of this cently released ad. bullying, threats, intimidation. the irs? no. try mitch mcconnell. the senate republican leader. that s right. mitch mcconnell is trying to bully and intimidate the conservatives just like the irs is. he tried to silence the conservatives, calling them trarts who he wants to punch in the nose for criticizing his liberal vote and mcconnell told other conservatives they d get the death penalty for opposing him. all right, kim. that s the sort of thing you don t usually see party to party. that s what democrats would say about republicans. i would think they would be nicer, paul. exactly. is there a precedent for this kind of thing that you can recall? no, i don t recall anything
like this. this is very harsh, brash knuck knuckles. what s the leadership? they re not only challenging mitch mcconnell. they re challenging the republican senator. they re challenging pat roberts in kansas, lindsey graham in south carolina. there s a whole network being challenged by the incumbents particularly by these conservative groups. what you have here, paul, i think we refer to them as the cam qazi caucus in the senate. these are the guys that want to find on every issue. they wanted a big protracted fight on the debt ceiling and they want them to run into the obama bayonets. they have not wanted to do that. this is a fight over tactics and what they re doing is kim, is there any substantive issue here? i mean is there a real difference over policy, or is this just about how much you re willing to fight? no. this is all about tactics.
time now for hits and misses of the week. collin, first to you. paul, last year the irs was caught targeting conservative nonprofit groups for additional scrutiny and they promised to make amends. instead the agency proposed a rule that would further restrict the free speech rights of nonprofit groups. that is now open for comments and it s now generated over 25,000 individual comments, a lot of them extremely negative and many of them from liberal groups like aclu. i have a hit to those sticking up for the first amendment. kim, a hit to ways and mean s chairman dave camp who after many years of work will this week release a comprehensive blueprint for tax reform. some are pushing back saying
senate. what do you make of that? back then people were trying to integrate the environmental with humanity and the private sector. this is the environment to the left. their agenda is to impose their ideas on the environmental on the population. do that, they have to win elections and gain control of legislatures. i think that s what s going on here. kim do, you have any objection to tom steyer spending it all? spend half a billion, spend more, spend it all, the more the merri merrier. i don t think you re going to see the liberals no. add free elections. i would add one thing. tom steyer wants to keep the dem democrats this the senate but he wants one that s on board with
the game. so, kim, some people were saying maybe this was a way to get out ahead of a decision to approve the keystone xl pipeline and the secretary of state has to make a recommendation to the president. that secretary of state is john kerry. could this be a little jujitsu? absolutely. here s the problem, paul. the president needs to shore up support among the environmentalsts. they re not happy with him in all manner of reasons. he never passed a cap and trade bill for climate. in deed he may support in the end, we don t know, the keystone pipeline. so this is his way of saying, no, i m still on board with your agenda, and he s talking about this fund he wants to promote, study all the climate change.