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GOP senators were also miffed with Cruz for demanding that Congress use a 2013 government funding bill to defund ObamaCare, which led to a 16-day government shutdown that damaged the GOP brand.

Cross-posting to a great article at NR by Andrew McCarthy. If the gOpE hopes to have a "brand" at all, they better listen to this ...

Conservatives fear that Republicans, with their eyes on 2016 and their ears on professional political consultants, have drawn the wrong lesson from last November’s good fortune. Voters are not suddenly infatuated with Republicans. Voters are alarmed at the direction in which President Obama is taking the country, and they elected the only available alternative.

The fate of 2016’s race for the White House will be decided by how well Republicans heed the mandate of 2014’s referendum on Obama’s policies. Will Republicans use the next two years to stop the president? If, instead, they use the next two years to further enable the president’s fundamental transformation of the United States, they will not have convinced the country that they can govern. They will have convinced their base that they are not worthy of support.

When the NRSC had to beg Cruz not to endorse anybody primarying a sitting Senator, in addition to his work with DeMint, it was obvious they feared and hated him, especially John Cornyn and Thad Cochran.

The House now has a replacement Repub Study Cmte, and I suspect the Senate will have the same, if only informally.