Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Tex.) marathon speech, modeled on an old-fashioned filibuster, against Obamacare touches on green eggs and ham, Ashton Kutcher, poker, and several other topics. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) 
 
 Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Tex.) marathon speech, modeled on an old-fashioned filibuster, against Obamacare touches on green eggs and ham, Ashton Kutcher, poker, and several other topics. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) 
 
 A couple of hours before Sen. Ted Cruz launched his doomed filibuster, his Republican colleagues staged an intervention. 
 
 They called him to the Strom Thurmond Room off the Senate floor, named after the late lawmaker who was famous for his filibusters against civil rights. They pleaded with their junior colleague to reconsider his plan to block a vote on legislation that would keep the government open. The filibuster, ostensibly in opposition to Obamacare, would do nothing to halt the hated health-care reforms, they said. It would make Republicans look foolish. It would leave House Republicans with too little time to avoid a shutdown. And it could cause Republicans to be blamed for that shutdown. 
 
 Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital. He joined the Post as a political reporter in 2000. View Archive 
 
 Cruz heard them out and then told them to take a hike. “I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand,” he announced as he launched his marathon filibuster. 
 
 His action hurt his fellow Republicans without doing anything to abolish Obamacare. But the filibuster did achieve something: It gave Cruz more TV exposure and further endeared him to the tea party. And for the ambitious senator from Texas, the most important thing has always been Ted Cruz. 
 
 As he brought the Senate to a halt, Cruz told his captive audience many salient facts: 
 
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 He likes pancakes. 
 
 He’s “a big fan” of White Castle. 
 
 His father liked to watch movies three times. 
 
 “ ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ was my favorite book when I was a little boy.” 
 
 His parents were small-business owners. 
 
 Their business went bankrupt. 
 
 He thinks fact-checkers (who often point out Cruz’s falsehoods) are a “pernicious” form of “yellow journalism.” 
 
 The senator from Texas shows what he's really after (Ann Telnaes/The Washington Post) 
 
 On and on he went, hour after hour. He spoke about Obamacare but also about his daughters, his wife, his travels, his footwear, his staff and his father’s underwear. With a fixed look of earnest sorrow, the balding lawmaker returned again and again to his favorite topic: himself. 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Cruz’s filibuster was how much of a solo act it was. There were cameos in the early hours by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), David Vitter (R-La.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and others, but in contrast to the team effort toward Paul’s filibuster in March, this was all about Cruz. 
 
 More than once he remarked on the empty chamber. “Anyone who wants to know why this body is held in low esteem only has to look out to the empty chairs,” he said. “What is the United States Senate doing to listen to you?” he asked his C-SPAN audience. 
 
 He didn’t seem to grasp that the chamber was empty because most of his colleagues didn’t want to stand with him. Privately, Republican senators spoke of their distaste for their self-aggrandizing colleague. There was speculation that the defund-Obama­care effort would get more votes if it weren’t identified with Cruz. 
 
 Their complaints were similar to those of House Republicans who branded Cruz a “fraud” for demanding that the House send the Senate a bill defunding Obamacare and then, once they committed to doing so, announced that he didn’t have the votes for Senate passage. 
 
 Even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), normally frightened of Cruz’s tea-party support, stood in opposition. “I just don’t happen to think filibustering a bill that defunds Obamacare is the best route to defunding Obamacare,” McConnell said on the floor Tuesday. “All it does is shut down the government and keep Obamacare funded.” 
 
 If this were the Roman senate, they would have had a phrase for what is happening to Cruz: Sic semper sui amatoribus. Thus always to self-lovers. 
 
 Perhaps Cruz’s filibuster would have had more support if it had some chance of succeeding. Senators had already committed to a vote Wednesday on the legislation, so his antics did nothing to postpone it. “On the morning news, I hear that there is a filibuster today,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “There will be no filibuster today. Filibusters stop people from voting, and we are going to vote tomorrow.” 
 
 Democrats, of course, were delighted with the Republicans’ bickering. President Obama was on the world stage, giving an address to the United Nations that included a passionate defense of why he believes the United States is the indispensable nation. “Some may disagree, but I believe America is exceptional,” Obama said. 
 
 Republicans, by contrast, were arguing about “cloture” and “post-cloture” votes to defund Obamacare. Is there any doubt about who will win the coming showdown? 
 
 Cruz tried to cast his quest in the loftiest terms, saying those who resist his bid to defund Obamacare are like those who appeased the Nazis. But before long, he was back to his favorite topic. 
 
 He spoke of the black ostrich cowboy boots he likes to wear on the Senate floor but said he was “embarrassed” to admit that he bought black tennis shoes for his filibuster. 
 
 Good to know his feet are comfortable. But how long until this self-promoting Texan gets the boot? 
 
 Twitter: @Milbank 
 
 Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. ||||| Please. Cruz has been casting stones since he first moved into his Senate offices nine months ago. His quarry is bottomless. Let us not soon forget the hearings into Chuck Hagel’s confirmation as secretary of defense, when Cruz wondered aloud whether Hagel had taken honorariums from countries hostile to the United States. This insinuation was groundless and shameless, but it paid off, in a fashion. A newcomer to the Senate, Cruz was the dark star of the proceedings. 
 
 A brute was born. He went on to pelt Dianne Feinstein, a Senate elder whom he condescendingly lectured about the Constitution. And there were yet more stones for his Republican colleagues, whom he dismissed as “squishes.” It matters not if you are foe or friend: if Cruz can besmirch you in a manner that bolsters his purer-than-thou, blunter-than-thou, braver-than-thou pose, brace yourself. 
 
 This week he is blithely putting the lawmakers in his party between a rock and a hard place. If they fail to match the anti-Obamacare passion that he flexed anew in a Senate speech Monday, they’ll land on the far right’s watch list. But if they match it and the government shuts down, there’s a good chance that the Republican Party takes the blame and a hit it can ill afford. 
 
 Image Frank Bruni Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times 
 
 It’s all the same to Cruz. His own notoriety is cemented. He won’t be a hero to many, but to the few who see him that way, he’ll be a veritable monument. 
 
 Which seems to match how he regards himself. 
 
 “He has come to the reluctant but unavoidable conclusion that he is simply more intelligent, more principled, more right — in both senses of the word — than pretty much everyone else in our nation’s capital,” writes Jason Zengerle in a profile of Cruz in the new issue of GQ. That’s not just a skeptical journalist’s take. That’s many exasperated Republicans’ assessment of Cruz, too. ||||| In 2013, the audacious upstart shut down the government on a hopeless quest to stop the President's signature policy. Love him or hate him, he is a vision of the future 
 
 Marco Grob for TIME 
 
 They don’t teach this stuff in eighth-grade civics class: a freshman U.S. senator from the minority party provokes a shutdown of the federal government in a hopeless quest to undo the President’s signature legislative achievement. The nation flirts with a potentially disastrous default while the populace looks on in disgust. And when the instigator tries to explain himself during one of the longest speeches in Senate history, somehow he ends up reciting Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham. 
 
 The faux filibuster to “defund Obama­care” waged by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas made him so unpopular with his fellow Republicans (Democrats scarcely concealed their delight) that they might have made him walk the plank—except that the GOP’s approval ratings were sinking so fast that even the plank was underwater. 
 
 Plus, anyone steeped in Washington politics could see that Cruz was already dead from this massive self-inflicted wound. 
 
 But to Cruz, 42, that is precisely the reason he believes he is winning. The young barn burner is convinced that “official Washington”—his umbrella term covering the old guard of both ­parties—is hopelessly out of touch with the voters, so he wears the scorn like a crown of laurel. If the Establishment says he’s finished, he concludes, he must be making headway. If they’re so sure he’s wrong, he must be doing something right. 
 
 “Changing Washington isn’t easy, and we shouldn’t be surprised when official Washington fights back,” he told Time in an end-of-year interview. “People who were used to making decisions in smoky rooms behind closed doors don’t know how to operate in today’s world, where people have direct access to information, can form their own opinions and know how to make their views heard.” 
 
 TIME Graphic by Chris Wilson, Sam Jacobs & Alexander Ho
– Ted Cruz is taking the "fast track" to Senate stardom, and that means capitalizing on conflict, writes Frank Bruni in the New York Times. He hasn't been around long, but he's already made "groundless and shameless" accusations against Chuck Hagel, offered Dianne Feinstein some constitutional pedantry, and even slapped fellow Republicans as "squishes." His stand against ObamaCare is forcing GOPers either to call for a government shutdown—likely hurting the party—or risk getting a place "on the far right’s watch list." What's more, his strategy won't get him far (even if it makes headlines) because successful politicians have to be likeable, whereas Cruz is "grandstanding and bloviating his way to obsolescence," Bruni writes. In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank agrees that Cruz is all about ambition—but he says Republicans like Cruz aren't risking their necks in the shutdown debate. In fact, they're "doing what’s necessary to survive in a political system gone mad." Thanks in large part to district mapping, few GOP House seats are "even marginally competitive," and conservative-dominated primaries are the only threat. So to keep their jobs, lawmakers have no choice but to take a Cruz-like path. Click for Milbank's full piece or for Bruni's.