Posted on 09/23/2013 8:41:38 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Republicans who fear the effects of a possible government shutdown over Obamacare next month seem, chiefly, to fear that Republicans will be blamed. This blame would translate into losses in next year’s mid-term elections, and if those losses are large enough, they could cost the GOP not only a shot at re-taking the Senate, but could cost control of the House as well. Democrat control of Congress would give Barack Obama nearly unchallenged power for his final two years in office.
Some Republicans fear the consequences of a shutdown so much that they’re smearing Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texan who is leading the defund effort, sniping at him in the media and even sending opposition research on him to Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace.
Their fears are understandable, but they’re overblown.
The 1995 government shutdown, which pitted then House Speaker Newt Gingrich against President Bill Clinton, is widely seen today as a disaster for the Republican Party. It wasn’t. That shutdown put a major dent in President Clinton’s prestige and popularity, while at the same time most Americans actually experienced no ill effects from it. The sky did not fall.
Gingrich and the GOP probably would have won the shutdown outright if he had not come off as a sore winner a few months later, when he appeared to blame it all on a personal snub by Clinton to him. Sen. Cruz and today’s other GOP leaders can be expected not to make such a bonehead, self-centered mistake. They are not Newt Gingrich.
Barack Obama is not Bill Clinton. Clinton was a superior politician whose instincts were less ideological than Obama’s. Clinton was able to connect with a majority of the American people directly; Obama has remained aloof and distant during his entire term in office. Clinton was seeking re-election and was thus more malleable; Obama is a far more rigid ideologue who is not facing re-election. Obama is more liable to mistake his re-election for a freer hand to combat Republicans now than Clinton was, and overreach. He made that mistake over gun control, and failed spectacularly. Obama has no one around him in the White House or among his congressional allies to rein in his leftist instincts.
Obama is already badly weakened. The gun control defeat and the more recent debacle over Syria have left him unable even to pass a resolution allowing the use of force against a rogue state dictator. In the Obamacare fight, he would be fighting to preserve an unpopular law that is rightly being blamed for destroying jobs and costing millions of Americans their health care coverage. Obama would be fighting to preserve a law that did not enjoy majority support when it was passed and is just as unpopular now. Obama is threatening to shut down the government just to keep that unpopular law on the books. Republicans can win the communications war over Obamacare.
Another reason that a 2013 shutdown may not play out like 1995 is the fact that the Chicken Little caucus has already been discredited. President Obama and the Democrats predicted Armageddon if the sequestration budget cuts, which Obama’s White House proposed in the first place, were enacted. Those cuts kicked in months ago. Has Armageddon happened? No. Most Americans haven’t even noticed any adverse effects at all. The predictions that sequestration would do massive damage have been proven to be hysterical and wrong. Current predictions that a government shutdown would do massive damage are similarly hollow. The economy is already weak, weaker than it was in 1995, but that’s largely because of Obamacare now. Killing that law will help the recovery. Most Americans won’t even notice a government shutdown, unless Obama and the Democrats somehow manipulate events to make the shutdown more painful. But doing that risks exposure for them.
Republicans who fear another shutdown should go back and study what really happened after the 1995 shutdown. The following year was a presidential election year. Bill Clinton was re-elected, but mainly because he ran against a weak GOP opponent who had opposed the 1995 shutdown, and because the shutdown had taught him that he had to move to the right in order to win. He signed the GOP-crafted welfare reform law in 1996. He and Gingrich would go on to craft the nation’s first balanced budget in a generation. And the GOP did not suffer major damage in Congress. They lost a few seats in the House, but actually gained seats in the Senate. Obama will not move to the center no matter what.
Barack Obama isn’t even on the ballot in 2014, but if his antics produce a government shutdown, he will be. Vulnerable Democrats in places like Arizona, Florida and elsewhere will not be embracing him or Obamacare. They will be running away from him and his destructive law.
Yes..sorry..link to Western Journalism piece below:
http://www.westernjournalism.com/authors-obamacare-will-get-rich-implementing/
I agree this could be a tactic to force a delay. That would make Obamacare an even bigger issue in the 2014 midterm elections, which would seem to be good for our side. Thanks.
They went into this without coming up with a victory plan. It’s obvious both the republicans are just going day to day without any long term strategy. Cruz and company are playing checkers while the democrats are two steps ahead with chess. Any plausible result looks bad for pubs. Result one, they vote for clouture on the house bill, at which point Reid strikes the defund language on a vote that cannot be filibustered so 51 dems are all that is needed and a clean CR heads back to the house. Where pubs now have to decide how to vote on a clean CR and then how to convince independent and low information voters that they are not for a gov. shutdown.
or the Senate can filibuster the house bill. And to independents and low information voters it looks like the repubs are filibustering the bill that the house repubs passed.
or the worst option is there is no real coherent decision in the republican party in the senate on how to vote and the party is split. Enjoy the civil war that breaks out after that.
i know I am Debbie Downer-ing the place up, thanks for letting me rant, im just so tired of republicans rushing to fight without figuring out where the victory lies.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/09/23/senate-number-two-republican-will-not-support-cruz-lee-obamacare-defund-strategy/
His mailbox is full but I left a message for his aide. 202-224-2934
The GOP doesn’t worry about anything except getting rid of the Tea Party movement, and we’re already gone from their sleazy, rotten party. We need a third party formed right now to prove it to them. With God’s blessing, ALL things are possible.
That’s wonderful. Your description of the 1995 shutdown needs to be put into an ad campaign and used for this shutdown!
“This is all philosophical.
I have yet to hear a coherent theory for how the Republicans, a minority in the US Senate will get the House bill that includes defunding of Obamacare passed by the Senate, and how they will overcome an Obama veto.
Anyone?”
Actually, it would be rather easy if the House GOP had a spine. If the Senate returns a bill to the House with Obamacare funding restored, simply refuse to take it up and pass a series of smaller bills funding specific pieces of the government — starting with the military. Send these bills over to the Senate and dare Dingy Harry to be the one to refuse funding for the military and other core functions.
What many people fail to understand is that the all spending originates in the House and they have all the power in this debate. The only thing stopping the strategy from being successful is the House GOP’s refusal to use the power the founders gave them.
And BTW — this defunding strategy is by no means unprecedented. The Dems used it in 2007 to kill the 700 mile border fence, which was passed in 2006 by the GOP-controlled House. The Dems simply refused to fund it when they got the House back, and our side did nothing about it. As a matter of fact, like Obamacare, that 700 mile fence is the LAW OF THE LAND. But it is not reality because the GOP, even though they have controlled Congress since 2011, have not restored funding for it.
Bottom line — defunding has worked in the past, and it can work here. It just requires a party with a spine.
If obama vetos the defunded CR — He literally shuts the government down himself. If he does that to save this crappy communist grab of the health industry — he will be blamed!!
Finally we get some sane rhetoric in the debate. I really fail to see how bringing the will of the people to the debate is going to be negative for the GOP.
I say stand your grounds. Draw the red line in the debate, and go through with it. The people are behind this.
IF the republicans in the house and Senate won’t back Cruz then fine, Cruz can go it alone. He’s spoken before the Supreme court and in other tight situations, in hundreds of competition debates and many times all ready eloquently as a Senator.
I’m betting that this junior senator can turn some heads and make the American public fully aware of what is going on here. The corruption in our gov’t is rampant. It’s time for the debate to go to the people.
Prohibition was a bad law and evidentially it was repealed but not without hard work and a grass root effort of citizens.
This law will eventually be repealed too.
From my view, shutting down the Fed gov’t (well, those parts that actually get shutdown) is a good thing.
It’s called the filibuster, The Soul of the Senate. It starts there. One person stands up and makes the country fully aware of what is going on here by taking control of the debate and doing so until he can’t stand or speak any longer.
It’s a wonder that no one did that before it was rammed through, but just the same the fact is the democrats controlled things for two years and rammed an illegal improper bill without one supporting republican.
Then comes ground swell support by every true American, true in the sense that they do not want this country high jacked, and they let their representatives and senators hear from them.
The filibuster will ask, “why?” Why are there exemptions for unions, Congress and a variety of companies and organizations who sponsored Obama’s reelection? Tell us “why” and extension for business but not the individual?
If someone like Ted Cruz fails, and the bill is passed in the senate stripped of the defunding, then it goes back to the House, AND THE HOUSE TAKES A STAND AND THE GOVERNMENT SHUTS DOWN unless Obamacare is defunded.
A lot of people have posted here that the government shutting down is not going to shut down hardly anything. We need a catharsis, we need cleaning house for the waste out there.
Anyway, I hope that answers your question.
Oh one more thing, lisen to Mark Levin’s powerful monologue on this. It will give you some real time excitement for what is about to unfold here.
Ive worked the phones and sent emails all day. No on obamacare no on cloture.
Does ANYONE doubt that the Progressives, using their propoganda arm (the State-Run-Media) will not be 24/7 showing starving Seniors, children, poor people and such, blaming it ALL on Republicans, the Tea Party, Extreme-Right-Wingers, etc., and selectively PUNISHING everyone EXCEPT there voterbase????
Do you EVER hear anyone talk about cutting the $2 Billion spent on Obamaphones in ANY of this? No? Why?
Because Obamaphones NEARLY EXCLUSIVELY are used by inner-city tribal parasites only, and THEY cannot be inconvienienced, and if an attempt were made to stop the practice of "Free Cellphones" for them, Holder would IMMEDIATELY launch a Civil Rights Complaint to show "Disparate Impact".
Why can we not show "Disparate Impact" on the set-asides for inner-city tribal parasites that are in place NOW, and stop the handouts????? Obamacare has "Disparate Impact", too, in that those who live off others (Welfare parasites) will not have to pay for it, while those who work for a living DO HAVE TO PAY? How is that "Equal Protection" for this "tax" (as John Roberts decided)?????
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