Boehner's words harsh for Cruz

Called Lucifer, Trump foe brushes off ex-speaker’s remarks

Former House Speaker John Boehner
Former House Speaker John Boehner

FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- Former House Speaker John Boehner unloaded on Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz during a talk to college students, saying the U.S. senator from Texas was "Lucifer in the flesh."

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Sen. Ted Cruz addresses more than 1,600 delegates at the North Dakota Republican Convention in Fargo, North Dakota, on Saturday, April 2, 2016.

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AP Photo

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. speaks during a campaign stop, Thursday, April 7, 2016, at the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Convention in Philadelphia.

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AP Photo

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listens during a campaign event, Thursday, April 21, 2016, in Hartford, Conn.

At a town hall-style event Wednesday at Stanford University in California, Boehner called front-runner Donald Trump his "texting buddy," but offered a more graphic response when asked about Cruz.

"Lucifer in the flesh," the former speaker said. "I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."

His comments were first reported by Stanford's student newspaper.

Cruz, campaigning Thursday in Fort Wayne, Ind., ahead of the state's primary next week, responded by saying Boehner was letting his "inner Trump come out" with his remarks. He attempted to turn the criticism into a slam on Trump.

"John Boehner in his remarks described Donald Trump as his texting and golfing buddy," Cruz said. "So if you want someone that's a texting and golfing buddy, if you're happy with John Boehner as speaker of the House and you want a president like John Boehner, Donald Trump is your man."

Both Cruz and Carly Fiorina, who was campaigning with him after he named her as his running mate Wednesday, referred to Boehner's comments during the rally.

In 2013, Cruz joined forces with tea party conservatives in the House in triggering a partial, 16-day government shutdown over demands to undo President Barack Obama's health care law. There was no chance Obama would agree to such a step, and Republican leaders like Boehner saw the move as a fruitless effort that only hurt the GOP politically.

Two years later, the same House conservatives challenged Boehner's leadership, and the speaker decided to step down rather than allow a public fight.

Boehner's successor, Paul Ryan, said at his weekly news conference Thursday that he has "a much better relationship than that with Sen. Cruz."

"My job is to help unify our party," Ryan said, when reporters pressed him on Boehner's comments. "I have a very good relationship with both of these men, and I'm going to keep it that way."

Cruz told reporters Thursday that he had never worked with Boehner.

"The truth of the matter is I don't know the man," Cruz said. "I've met John Boehner two or three times in my life. If I have said 50 words in my life to John Boehner, I would be surprised. And every one of them has consisted of pleasantries, 'Good to see you, Mr. Speaker.' I've never had any substantive conversation with John Boehner in any respect."

Cruz said he was rebuffed by Boehner when he asked to meet with him during the government shutdown.

Cruz said Boehner's comments reflect his frustration with Americans who stand with Republicans who want to hold members of Congress accountable for their campaign promises to repeal Obama's health care law and pursue other conservative goals.

"When John Boehner calls me Lucifer, he's not directing that at me," Cruz said. "He's directing that at you."

superdelegates harassed

The interparty vitriol wasn't limited to Republicans.

Some supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders -- frustrated with Hillary Clinton's commanding lead in the Democratic delegate count -- have turned their angst on superdelegates, the party insiders whose ability to back either candidate give them an outsize role in picking the nominee.

The superdelegates include public officials: governors, former presidents and even Sanders himself. But they also include volunteers who've generally stayed behind the scenes, people like Nancy Schumacher of Elk River, Minn.

"Some of the [phone and email] messages called me names. Some of them called Hillary names. And others said ... something bad will happen to me," said Schumacher, a Democratic committee member. "It's kind of hard to take sometimes."

The Sanders campaign says it doesn't condone harassment.

Yet Schumacher says she's received vitriolic phone and email messages from self-identified Sanders backers and doesn't quite understand how things got quite so nasty. Eight years ago, she backed Clinton but said she "cheerfully" switched to then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. She'd do the same, she said, if Sanders won the popular vote or pledged delegates from state primary elections.

Barry Goodman, a personal-injury lawyer in Detroit, suddenly found his firm's Yelp business review page besieged by bad ratings.

"You deserve this rating. Why does some random lawyer get more sway than the citizens," read one comment.

Gus Bickford, the former executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, was taken aback by the threats that flowed into his inbox and onto his Facebook page.

"Someone put up a list of the superdelegates and a person from Rhode Island posted a response that basically said, 'They should all be assassinated' and then said 'I'm only joking,'" recalled Bickford. "With the way people are talking, you never know who's going to take something like that seriously."

Clinton won the support of many superdelegates even before votes were cast in the primaries, and that has drawn the wrath of many Sanders supporters.

Clinton is more than 90 percent of the way to capturing the nomination when counting superdelegate support, meaning that she can lose every remaining primary by a wide margin and still become the party's standard-bearer, according to The Associated Press. It also means Sanders would need to flip hundreds of superdelegates to his side to have a shot at the nomination.

So far, 520 superdelegates have publicly voiced support for Clinton, while Sanders has 39.

Though they've been part of Democratic presidential elections since 1984, the superdelegates have never been a determining factor. Even in 2008, when several dozen switched to Barack Obama from Clinton, Obama won enough pledged delegates to make superdelegate support irrelevant.

Information for this article was contributed by Erica Werner, Donna Cassata and Lisa Lerer of The Associated Press.

A Section on 04/29/2016

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