Free Republic

Sen. John McCain said Wednesday that there was never a chance of defunding Obamacare, blaming politicians who said it was possible for the current government shutdown. “We started this on a fool’s errand, convincing so many millions of Americans and our supporters that we could defund Obamacare,” McCain (R-Ariz.) told Wolf Blitzer on CNN. “[That] obviously wouldn’t happen until we had 67 Republican senators to override a presidential veto.”[snip] “[It was] the people that convinced so many millions of Americans, tea partiers specifically we’re talking about, that there was some way to defund Obamacare. We can’t,” McCain said.

He's a Democrat. I don't mind that he's a Democrat, but he's going around the country claiming to be part of the opposition party. This is, essentially, the Democratic response: ObamaCare was duly passed, it was an issue in a presidential campaign that the GOP lost, end of story — whether or not there are 51 or even 60 votes in the Senate to defund this thing. He actually used the phrase “elections have consequences,” which must be the first time a member of the *minority* party has ever tossed that into a debate. Like Ramesh Ponnuru says, weren’t Ted...

For refusing to be co-opted by the Republican establishment and the permanent political class while trying to honor his campaign promises, particularly on defunding Obamacare, "top" Republicans actually sent opposition research on Cruz to Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace before Cruz's appearance. This was the type of backstabbing that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin predicted in an exclusive op-ed for Breitbart News on Saturday in which she said she and Cruz should compare "shiv marks" the next time they meet. Palin subsequently called on Wallace to release the names of the "anonymous sources."