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Washington • Days before the October 2013 government shutdown, Sens. Mike Lee and Ted Cruz bowed their heads in the Texas Republican's Capitol office, read from the Book of Psalms and asked for guidance from God.

Cruz then walked to the Senate floor and began a 21-hour-long marathon speech lambasting Obamacare, spelled on occasion by Lee, whom Cruz paints in his new book as his right-hand man and best buddy.

"Over the course of the filibuster a number of allies stood by my side, none more courageously or indispensably than Senator Mike Lee," Cruz writes in "A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America."

"Mike was with me on the Senate floor during the entire course of the filibuster," Cruz adds, "from the beginning, through the dark of night, till the very end at high noon the next day."

Cruz and Lee have been described as the Senate's Batman and Robin, and the Texan lavishes praise on the Republican Utah senator in his book, released as Cruz begins his presidential campaign.

Cruz — whose strategy with Lee to kill Obamacare funding by tying it to the passage of the budget led to the 16-day shutdown — defends their plan to this day.

"We didn't shut down the government," Cruz writes. "Neither I, nor Mike Lee, nor the House Republicans even once voted to shut down the government. To the contrary, over and over again we voted to fund the government. From the outset I stated repeatedly that we should fund the entire federal government and defund Obamacare."

And while Cruz takes plenty of space in his book to bash Democrats, he also scolds his fellow Republicans for not standing up for the principles they espouse.

When Lee and Cruz pitched their plan to try to withhold money to implement the Affordable Care Act, the Texan writes, "their reaction was immediate, visceral, and virtually unanimous. 'Absolutely not!' 'A terrible idea!'" Cruz writes. "Indeed, they openly laughed at the idea, telling Mike and me that we just didn't understand how Washington works. But when we asked them for their alternative, there were crickets. There was no alternative — do nothing was leadership's alternative — but they vehemently opposed our plan."

Cruz says Republicans weren't actually playing to win in the debate over the shutdown because they should have welcomed the fight with then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., as the GOP-led House passed stopgap bills to fund certain parts of the government such as Veterans Affairs and Reid declined to take them up for a vote.

"Republican leadership didn't want to win," Cruz says. "Some readers might think that sounds a little harsh. You might assume they wanted to win, but just couldn't. Their behavior suggested otherwise."

Cruz noted that he first became friends with Lee after meeting him in November 2010 at the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention in Washington, and their mutual respect blossomed. Lee was one of the first elected officials to endorse Cruz's bid for the Senate.

"We walked the Capitol hallways talking for hours about legal issues, constitutional issues, and the challenges facing our country," Cruz says. "We found ourselves agreeing on almost every topic we could come up with."

Lee, who recently came out with his own book, "Our Lost Constitution," is so far neutral in the GOP race for the presidential nomination, given that three of his closest allies, Cruz and Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida, are vying for the job.

"I hope to be as supportive as I can of all three of them," Lee previously said, "because I really genuinely like all three of them."