Posted on 04/07/2011 7:45:16 PM PDT by Mozilla
With the government shutdown looming and Republicans looking increasingly obstinate before it, Rep. Michele Bachmann has staked her place squarely against it. In an interview with CNN’s John King tonight, Rep. Bachmann reiterated her promise to donate money to the troops should their salaries fall victim and pleaded with her colleagues to avoid the worst case scenario.
King opened up the interview by asking Rep. Bachmann whether, as many have speculated, it is the Tea Party caucus that has Rep. John Boehner and the Republican leadership “in a straitjacket” over spending. “The House Republicans have bent over backwards to assure there is not a government shutdown,” Rep. Bachmann argued, then focusing on the individual issues at stake when discussing a shutdown rather than the proposition itself: “I think that we should have a clean bill that makes sure that the paychecks get to the troops on time” separate from the budget bill.
While she did not directly make any defiant statements towards the Republican leadership, her emphasis on moving away from a shutdown rang slightly awry from the rhetoric of many conservative pundits who have no real stake in a government shutdown, like Fox News’ Sarah Palin, who repeatedly tweeted in favor of a government shutdown today.
For most of the interview she kept the message on the future of the military, as troops would be the first to see their salaries halted. Confirming her Twitter statement earlier today that she would donate her salary to a military nonprofit should a shutdown occur.
Instead, she argued, “we need to have the fight on Obamacare.” So no, this is not a sign that Rep. Bachmann has gone “soft”– she still very much opposes Obamacare and called it a central issue for 2012 and for the path to stabilizing the budget.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediaite.com ...
Well in 1996 the GOP held the House rather easily even with the shutdown. You’d think if the public was really upset they would have turned on the House members. Also, Clinton did win but not because of the shutdown. He own because the economy was in great shape and because of Dole. The exit poll on election day showed Powell would have beaten him easily if he was the GOP nominee(again, even with the shutdown).
Clinton didn’t win in 1996 because of the 95 shutdown. It really had little to do with the outcome. the only thing the shutdown resulted in was that a little known intern got to spend extra time at the WH and bring the President pizza and we all know where that ended up.
Also, what makes you think if public opinion is where it is now it will be any better in the fall when it’s 180B of cuts and not 60B of cuts. Why is there any reason to believe we’ll do any better with the 2012 budget than we will now?
The House of Representatives does have the power to defund anything by simply not appropriating the money for it. But the Senate can stall the House by not voting for that House bill. Obama's Libyan war can be defunded by the House. But the Senate can refuse to pass that House budget (bill) that does not have the Libya funding. Thus we would have an impasse that resembles what's going on today on the federal budget.
But in the 1970's when the House defunded the Vietnam war the Senate offered no opposition to the House action. Indeed, the Senate passed it and it was signed by the president. There was no fight from the Senate then, unlike today, where we see a socialist Democrat Senate leadership opposing a Republican/conservative House. I remember it well because I was around in the 70s (17 years of age) and thought the Democrats' behavior was outright treason -- just like today.
Where is a direct quote. Where she says I am against a shut down.
No, you would think that if the voters REALLY rallied behind Republicans in 1995 after 3 weeks of a shutdown after Newt publically bragged that he would shutdown the government (as some here want MB to do) that it would have been Clinton who caved instead of Newt. You would have thought that Clinton would have had a challenge in 1996.
Newt gave into all of Clintons demands including back pay for the three weeks government workers were off, costing more not less to close the government. Do you call that a victory?
I dont see any polls that show that shutting down the government 'in itself' is popular. What makes you think that if Republicans royally screw this up now and cave under overwhelming public pressure that they will even try to fight later? They can only win if they win.
Still waiting for that direct quote, either that are you have told a lie.
The fight needs to be over the 2012 budget and election. What they're fighting over now is paltry. Get the best you can now and save the big fight (and possible shutdown) for the bigger fish.
When you are in the process of negotiations it would be very stupid to say” I favor a government shutdown”. A shutdown means the process has failed, you are going to take the heat for no honest effort to negotiate.
She was being positive and providing cover for the opposition in the event Boehner can bring them around. It is a gesture to say “you can go ahead with this and merely look like you agreed with our proposal because you don’t want a shutdown either”. They can then claim they did it for the good of the country.
There is a lot going on in the way this is handled by the GOP in regards to public perception.
No matter what, anything that happens will have to get through two democrat gates to become law. Obama could just veto the whole thing.
That sort of puts the lie to the headline, neither for or against, willing to let the speaker do the negotaions. Dang, what a radical. Nothing more than a statement of support for the leadership. Someone is grasping at straws here for some reason.
Do you even need to speculate on the reason? LOL
Didn't we learn ANYTHING from the GOP tossing out the "Contract with America" because the Dems started playing rough? Apparently not...
They should have cut 120 billion then settled for 60 billion...Fools...
Well, I can’t disagree with that. I don’t know if it is possible but they should have had a safety valve for the military from the beginning also.
Do you know who wrote the House bill?
just asking
I meant defund not fund.
my point was that the idea that the shutdown in 95 led to Clinton winning in 96 and hurt the GOP really doesn’t hold up. They went from 230 seats won in the house to 228. In the Senate they actually gained two seats and went from 53 to 55. So the effect in both houses of Congress was net even. We saw what happened in 2010 and 2008 and 2006 when the public is mad at Congress and blames them, the on epary loses a whole bunch of seats. A loss of two seats was no big deal.
As for Clinton, is there any legitimate case to be made that if the shutdown had never happened Dole would have won? Does anyone believe Dole lost because of the shutdown? Again, even with the shutdown, polls showed that if Colin Powell was the GOP nominee instead of Dole he’d have beaten Clinton by double digits. Again, even after the shutdown the GOP would have clobbered Clinton with a different candidate.
I’m just saying that I think some people are playing chicken little with what the effects of a shutdown would be. The shutdown in 95 didn’t really end up hurting the GOP all that much.
“I think the moon will rise tonight.”
Does not mean “I hope the moon will rise tonight.”
Do you understand now?
You (or I) can always make up our own measuring stick for something you(we) really want to judge as a success or failure. Yes Newt didnt completely lose the congress in 1996 after a huge win in 1994, but Pelosi managed two wave elections 2006 and 2008 and her party got the presidency too. If that was the measuring stick then Newt got creamed just by losing seats. Clearly it was no big winner for him.
We do know that Newt caved to Clinton after the polls flipped against him, even wasting MORE money back paying the employees that got off 3 weeks (then they got a fourth paid in January because of a blizzard.) Newt was so beaten at that point he couldn't even force the government to use existing saved leave time for the shutdown and had to come up with that funding. That looked real bad.
My point in these comments is very simple much like the General Patton character in the 1971 movie said (paraphrased) :”Don't fight just to make a point and lose, fight to win” . History judges by results not claims.
The main info in this article, Bachmann’s idea of sending the Senate a separate military FY11 funding bill with a one week extension teaser is a very smart idea. Send them one bill at a time with only the things you want to fund starting with the toughest for them to vote against politically. Disarm them and destroy them.
I don't want to see Obama do to Republicans like Clinton did to Newt in 1995. Over at MSNBC they are daily talking about getting Republicans to self destruct as they bait them all on a desire to shutdown
what does what happened in 2006 and 2008 have to do with 1996?
I’m just saying I don’t think the shutdown in 95 was why Clinton won in 96. I don’t think there’s any real evidence that supports it.
Also, there was the whole thing where Newt said he went with the shutdown because Clinton made him sit in the back of AF1 on some trip(I believe to Israel for Rabin’s funeral but it may have been somewhere else).
As Tom Delay wrote:
The Republicans’ support was further diminished two days later when Gingrich made a widely-reported complaint about being snubbed by Clinton; Tom DeLay called it “the mistake of [Gingrich’s] life”.[1]
DeLay writes in his book No Retreat, No Surrender:[5]
“He told a room full of reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One... Newt had been careless to say such a thing, and now the whole moral tone of the shutdown had been lost. What had been a noble battle for fiscal sanity began to look like the tirade of a spoiled child. The revolution, I can tell you, was never the same.”
Here was the NY Daily News cover
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nydailynews_newt.jpg
Now, if Boehner says he wants a shutdown because Obama made him sit in the back of AF1 we might have problems. BUt if he sticks with it being about spending and getting thing under control I think things will be different.
I’m just saying I don’t necessarily buy that a shutdown now means disaster in 2012. It might. But it might not. That said, if they can get around 40B in cuts I don’t really see the need for a shutdown over getting an extra 20B to hit the 61B figure. My overall point was that I think the media has exaggerated the impact of the 95 shutdown on the 96 election. We held both houses, we gained in the Senate and lost all of 2 seats in the House and would hold the House for the next ten years to boot). Yes, Clinton won, but not because of the shutdown. It had very little to do with his victory.
Largely agree. I like Bachmann. I was just saying that if you look back at what actually happnened and not what the media says happened it’s a bit different. Again, if the shutdown was such a killer why did the 1996 exit poll show the Republican Powell beating Clinton 48-36 with 8 for Perot. If the shutdown really hurt the GOP you wouldn’t expect to see that. Why did they gain seats in the Senate and lose only 2 in th House? But I made those points elsewhere.
Again, Newt largely destroyed himself with saying the whole reason was because Clinton sunbbed him on AF1, even Delay mentioned it in his book.
And who cares about MSNBC? They spent all of 2009 and 2010 talking about how the Tea Party was going ot destory the GOP and the GOP had their biggest win since the 30s.
Ultimately, as long as the Dems have the WH and Senate nothing major can really be done. Even if the GOP takes the WH and the Senate in 2012 the dems will still likely have at least 40 in the Senate and be able to stop anything. It’s very frustrating.
The media is busy exaggerating the effects of the CURRENT coming shutdown to scare the crap out of the voters now and get them mad at whoever sounds like they want a shutdown. Back in 1995 there was much Boo-Hoo-Hoo about the media doing this then, but this time it should be no surprise.
The Dems have changed their talking points away from the amount of cuts and are claiming that the riders show Republicans dont care about deficits and only care about politics. That message needs to be countered before it festers politically.
I agree with you comments about Newt, he really screwed things up with those statements in 1995. Thanks for the details.
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