Running for president while simultaneously serving in the Senate has its shortfalls. You have to go on the record taking tough votes. You have a day job, which pulls you away from the campaign trail.

But there’s also the perks not afforded to the other candidates. Namely, you can lob red meat at your base in the name of your official job.

Exhibit A: Sen. Ted Cruz’s hearing Wednesday afternoon. He sat in the chairman’s seat, gavel in hand, to proceed over the Congress’ umpteenth hearing on the Internal Revenue Service’s alleged targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was in the hot seat (for, according to his count, his 30th congressional hearing in 18 months). And Cruz used the Senate Judiciary stage to deliver his campaign-style lines in the hallowed committee room.

During his 12-minute opening statement, Cruz invoked Richard Nixon multiple times to draw a parallel between the Watergate criminal acts and the modern day IRS scandal, specifically the subsequent allegations of a cover-up when e-mails of Lois Lerner, the former director of the IRS’s exempt organizations unit, couldn’t be found.

“Richard Nixon’s ghost must have been smiling …tricky Dick understood well destroying emails. In his day it was erasing tape, but it was much the same,” Cruz said.

Cruz reminded the crowd that when Nixon and his aides targeted his political enemies “he rightfully resigned from the presidency in disgrace for his abuse of power.” (Was he suggesting President Obama should resign? That’s gotta be worth a few conservative votes.)

If the IRS is now a political arm for the White House, he continued, that’s a strong argument for abolishing the entire agency.

IRS-bashing is a winning issue among conservative voters, particularly those Cruz needs to win back from Donald Trump if he has any chance at the GOP presidential nomination.

And Cruz made sure this issue isn’t going away. He asked Koskinen to turn over the percentage of bundlers to the presidential campaigns of John McCain, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama (in both elections) who were audited by the IRS.

Koskinen reiterated that tax audits are not determined by an individual’s political activity. Cruz said that data on mega donors could show whether that’s true.

Meanwhile, nearly two dozen House Republicans sent a letter to Obama this week asking for Koskinen’s removal, saying he has not fully cooperated with the investigation into the IRS targeting scandal.

That didn’t come up during the Senate hearing. But afterwards, Koskinen told reporters that the GOP is just disappointed that the evidence the IRS has provided hasn’t turned up more smoking guns.

“If it hasn’t met all of their expectations in terms of the substance of it,” he said, “that’s not our fault.”