Boehner may have calculated that Obama would negotiate — if not over Obamacare, then about spending and entitlements. The president’s uncompromising stance against hostage-taking meant Boehner had to follow through on the threat of a government shutdown — and meant that the GOP would shoulder most of the blame for an episode of dysfunction. It also meant, however, that Boehner would get to stand before the cameras every day and show his defiance of Obama, which makes House Republicans swoon.
The longer the crisis goes on, the more Boehner is able to claim battle-forged solidarity with the conservatives who once thought him weak and wobbly. If Boehner wins any concessions at all, he will trumpet them as a great victory. If he gets nothing, he will have led his troops valiantly into battle against all odds...........
Win or lose, Boehner will have damaged his standing only with the Republican establishment, which, you might have noticed, is not in charge anymore. He will have improved his standing with the conservatives who had been grumbling about his performance as speaker.
The party is taking a pounding in the polls — approval of the GOP is down to 28 percent, according to Gallup, a record low — but redistricting has made the House majority difficult to dislodge. If the public adopts a pox-on-both-houses attitude, with Democrats taking an approval hit as well, Republicans have a good chance of holding on......."
"Earlier this week, after the morning meeting of House Republicans, I found myself deep in a three-way conversation with California Rep. Tom McClintock and another reporter. The reporter’s questions were well-researched and dogged, ranging from previous House offers to entitlement reform to what “default” really meant for what the Senate might do next.
McClintock, a former candidate for governor of California, has plenty of question-dodging experience and proved to a master evader, turning every question back to how “the House and the Senate are designed to come to independent judgments.” It felt a little useless, but I didn’t realize how useless it must have been to my colleague until McClintock left. At that moment the reporter who’d just pressed this congressman with at least 11 questions turned to me and asked: “Who was that?”
I tell this story not to disparage someone. Days earlier, I’d asked a colleague the exact same question after quizzing a white-haired, middle-aged Republican congressman with a Southern accent. (Hello, Rep. Mo Brooks.) The current House Republican majority, the 232 people who run half the Congress, is mostly male, mostly middle-aged, and mostly white, making it sometimes impossibly hard to differentiate one member from another.
That is one of the many reasons that the press corps—and readers, surely—have so much trouble identifying who really matters as the shutdown drags on................
[BIG snip]
.....The Republican conference can show that sort of unity, too, and it has on all of the gimmicky bills produced during the shutdown. Republicans like King have lambasted the Gohmerts of their party, then voted with them. That isn’t because there’s a secret cabal of 30 conservatives holding the party hostage. It’s because most of the members are conservatives, and they’re more responsive to movement activists than to anyone in “the business community.” If you followed the “defund Obamacare” movement through the various profiles of a star, like Sen. Ted Cruz, you might have assumed that his crushing defeat would end the standoff. It didn’t. Whether the standoff ends is up to the anonymous likes of Reps. Chuck Fleischmann or Luke Messer, people that Jack Lew probably couldn’t pick out of a lineup."
. . . If what the House GOP wanted was a Pickett’s Charge, Boehner showed that he was willing to lead it. . .
Remember, Pickett’s so-called “Charge” was a near thing. It was only “doomed to fail” in hindsight. GENERAL Lee’s judgment might have been right, it was his last change to win the war, he wouldn’t have that chance again, and “the enemy is there.” It came within an eyelash of changing history.
Our fights in this Congress might SUCCEED by an eyelash this time and save this country. In both cases, SENATOR Lee’s (ironic, no?) judgement is correct: You lose 100% of the fights in which you surrender before trying.
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