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Obama Care
Defunding Strategy Could Spell GOP Victories In 2014
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Posted 09/23/2013 07:10 PM ET
Congress: Let’s applaud the steadfast Republicans pushing the “defund ObamaCare” strategy. Forcing Democrats to vote yet again on this costly, job-killing health reform will help defeat them next year.
Critics of the “defunders” — and there are smart, principled minds within their number — warn that Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and the Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives are saving President Obama from his various failures and scandals.
That depends. Cruz is unfairly accused of having no endgame. Actually, he does, and he outlined it for RealClearPolitics.com. If Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid rejects the House bill, thus setting into motion “a government shutdown to force ObamaCare on every American,” then the House should respond not by approving another big bill funding the entire government, including ObamaCare, but by passing smaller government funding measures that withhold ObamaCare funding, “one at a time, starting with the military.”
The goal? “Dare Reid to keep voting to shut down the government.” And if “Senate Republicans unite, red-state Senate Democrats will be next. And that is how we win,” says Cruz.
As columnist Byron York points out, Cruz and his allies believe that if the Senate’s 46 Republicans stand together — as all GOP senators did on a toothless defunding measure in March — it will force Reid “to adopt a procedure that would require a 60-vote threshold to pass an amendment striking the defunding provision.” This “would allow Republicans, if they stay united, to stop Reid from taking out the ObamaCare provision.”
Despite Cruz’s cannibalistic savaging at the hands of fellow Republicans, this sharp former Texas solicitor general has two valuable things on his side. One is that in championing defunding of the (far from) Affordable Care Act, he is simply keeping a campaign promise his less courageous attackers also made...
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Imagine that an opposition party that opposes and fights.