Atop his perch of demagoguery, it would not be a stretch to say that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is among those primarily responsible for the coming shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Cruz, along with his counterparts in the House of Representative, have fanned the flames of xenophobia and compelled the Republican party to put funding for the department at risk in an attempt to repeal the president's recent executive orders and the deferred action program for DREAMers that was implemented in 2012.
Now that we're quickly approaching a department shutdown, Cruz wants you to know that he has been a voice for reason among Republicans.
"It's now up to leadership to lay out their strategy," Cruz said of Republicans. "I told them this was not a winning strategy and they went down this road anyway." [...]
"The Democrats need to stop holding national security hostage for partisan political objectives. What they're doing is wrong and irresponsible," Cruz said.
Congressional Republicans have opposed the president's executive orders and tied them to funding for the federal government at Ted Cruz's repeated insistence. Furthermore, this isn't even the first time a government shutdown could be attributed to Ted Cruz.
As for his assertion that Democrats are "holding national security hostage," I would point out that Democrats are willing to pass a clean bill that properly funds the Department of Homeland Security for the remainder of the fiscal year. No strings attached.
It was congressional Republicans who detached funding for the department from the rest of the federal government near the end of the previous session of Congress. They intentionally created the current situation and "holding national security hostage," as Cruz claims Democrats have done, was their plan all along.