Senator Ted Cruz went on CNN and probably expected a lightweight interview from Chris Cuomo, but instead became the lightweight when he was challenged over his dogged attempts at defunding Obamacare without offering up a viable solution as a U.S. Senator. Cruz didn't like that very much.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and CNN "New Day" co-host Chris Cuomo got in a testy exchange over Obamacare on Wednesday.
Cuomo pressed Cruz to offer concrete solutions to Obamacare, rather than just criticize it.

Cuomo: You don't think that you have a responsibility as a U.S. Senator to do better than that in terms of offering a solution for what to do next?

Cruz. Well, I - I appreciate your trying to lecture me in the morning, thank you for that.

Cuomo: Not at all, Senator. I'm worried, the same as you. Anybody who looks at the situation has worries. Families need health insurance.

Cruz: Sir, if you're worried, did you speak out for the five million people who've lost their health insurance? Did you speak out…?

Cuomo: We've been covering it doggedly and I'm sure you watch the show. The problem is I don't have the power to fix it. You do. That's what a U.S. Senator does. You sponsor law. You know this. It's not a lecture, it's a concern. I'm asking what are you going to do about it?

Ted Cruz translates that someone asking him pointed questions about his opposition to Obamacare without offering solutions is a lecture? What a WATB. Oh, and what is Cruz's solution to all those millions of people he says are now losing their health insurance?

“Let people purchase health insurance across state lines.”

He actually said that. I thought he was a Harvard man?

Joan Walsh has more:

Sen. Ted Cruz pretends to be a tough guy, but mostly he spends his time trashing Democrats in front of adoring right-wing crowds and conservative journalists. On Wednesday he sat down with CNN’s Chris Cuomo – you didn’t expect him to go to MSNBC, did you? – and showed himself to be incredibly thin-skinned when pressed just a little on how he would replace the Affordable Care Act he wants to repeal. It was an interesting window on Cruz’s temperament as well as his cynical, threadbare “policy” agenda.

[...] Apparently Cruz isn’t used to being grilled. Cuomo got him to share what passes for an answer from conservatives these days: “Let people purchase health insurance across state lines.”

Wow. That’s what Princeton and Harvard Law degrees get you: a warmed-over right wing non-plan that’s been around forever. As Ezra Klein reported back in 2010, the Congressional Budget Office looked at it in 2005 and found it didn’t reduce the number of uninsured and would only save the federal government $12 billion over the next eight years. (By contrast, the CBO says the ACA will reduce the deficit by $41 billion in 2013 alone.)

The CBO also found that allowing people to buy insurance plans across state lines would “make insurance more expensive for the sick and cheaper for the healthy, and lead to more healthy people with insurance and fewer sick people with insurance.” Other than that, it’s a terrific idea.--

So in just one morning, Ted Cruz was revealed as a wuss, a hypocrite and a policy lightweight. The last one doesn’t matter on the right, but the first two won’t wear well in a presidential race. Kudos to Cuomo for not accepting Tea Party platitudes as a substitute for governing proposals.

Buying insurance across state lines is a pipe dream and Cruz knows this. As Walsh says, Cruz is a lightweight when it comes to substance. Maybe that's what conservatives like about him?