The Art of the Impossible

Could Democrats have been made fearful that the public would hold Obama responsible for keeping the government shut down solely over Obamacare in spite of the law’s unreadiness and unpopularity? It was a long shot in which three things had to go right: (a) The public had to see that the government shutdown was not as painful in reality as the media had predicted it would be; (b) Obamacare’s deleterious consequences had to begin to emerge such that they were seen as a bigger problem than the shutdown; and (c) the Republicans had to stay united — they had to keep pounding these themes with unwavering conviction.

In the event, things could not have gone better, in the Hail Mary sense, on the first two elements. The shutdown, in which four-fifths of the government continued running, did not have an impact on most Americans — and Obama’s obnoxious contrivances to make the shutdown seem painful only underscored that, in reality, it wasn’t so bad. The Obamacare rollout turned out to be worse than Republicans could have imagined — when not reporting on the system’s massive technological failures, and the tiny number of “exchange” applicants, the press was forced to report on sticker-shock as American finally grappled with eye-popping, family-budget-breaking price hikes for coverage.

But then there’s that third element. If Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and House conservatives can justly be accused of being delusional, it is in adopting a strategy that banked on Republican unanimity in the face of withering opposition. It never happened; the intramural squabble started even before the shutdown.

Democrats could have pulled this strategy off. Indeed, their media-annealed steel is why we have Obamacare in the first place. But not Republicans. Today’s Republican establishment is the George W. Bush “We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move” GOP — with all that portends, as Jonah expertly itemized in this 2004 G-File (i.e., before the GOP Congress and White House larded a few trillion dollars more onto the national debt).

Republicans do not have a unified position on Obamacare, on “entitlements,” or on the relationship between the citizen and the central government. Yes, it is an exaggeration to say there is no meaningful difference between the GOP establishment and Barack Obama — although I do not believe there is much difference between, say, John McCain and Hillary Clinton. But it is not an exaggeration to say the GOP establishment is more sympathetic to Obama’s case for the centralized welfare state than to the Tea Party’s case for limited government and individual liberty. And it is not an exaggeration to say that Beltway Republicans are more worried about what the media will say about them today than what the Tea Party may do to them every other year.

That is why the GOP establishment’s proclaimed strategy to repeal Obamacare by winning serial elections is not even a Hail Mary pass. It is politics as the art of the impossible.

Andrew McCarthy has been a standout observer of the whole attempt to defund Obamacare. He has written a series of articles which are clear and unassailable.

To add to what he has written, I would observe that the criticism of Ted Cruz is that he is culpable because he failed to account for the quisling and the cowardice quotient of the Republican elitists. In other words, he should have known that his own troops were not up to battle against hardened Democrat veterans and he should have surrendered before he began. To do otherwise was reckless because it was hopeless.

But it was hopeless because his side was treacherous.

As Cruz was fond of pointing out, it is a guarantee that you will lose 100% of those battles in which you surrender at the beginning.

So it is Ted Cruz's fault for having too much faith in his fellow man but not the Democrats' fault for shutting down the government, for refusing to negotiate, for willingness to destroy the economy to save Obamacare (after all, that is a main complaint against Cruz for his alleged recklessness), for distorting the Constitution by failing to bring up appropriations bills in the Senate, for illegally distorting the shutdown to punish the public.

We know the Democrats are villains but what of those who enable them?

Those Republicans plead the offenses of the media as excuses for their cowardice and their actual, literal treachery. But they had done nothing for three years to condition the public about Obamacare except attempt to manipulate the public with fraudulent bills to repeal. Their treachery is not new but ancient. They had left the field open for the media. They made no attempt to get out in front and shape the the debate. They have no defense pleading a media to whom they prostituted themselves.

Those Republicans plead the determination of the Democrats in the Senate as well as their majority and the determination of the president to defend Obamacare the last extreme. That only makes Republicans look more pathetic for their own comparative lack of principle.

The Republicans' treachery has led the party to the point of civil war as many of us predicted before this battle began. We also said that a sell out on immigration will surely lead to a disintegration of the party. No national Republican money went to the campaign of Steve Lonegan in New Jersey. We can expect similar treatment up and down the line and there is no viable option left to us now but to mobilize against the establishment candidates up and down the line.

The establishment is actually making war on us.

Your post #7 should be published in a pamphlet and air-dropped all over town.

Cruz is a fool because he depended on Repubs to be true to principles they don’t have.

Well, that’s fine. I’d rather have a fool like Cruz on my side than 500 faithless ciphers who believe in nothing and fight only for their rice bowl.

Better a man who will fight against all odds, a man who didn’t come looking for 99 new friends, than all of the shape-shifters arrayed against him. That’s a man whose life will actually mean something in the end. As far as I’m concerned, the GOP is dead. Cruz and the tiny handful like him, they are my party.

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