When you negotiate you begin with everything you want including the kitchen sink. Where you end up, is where you end up. Cruz/Lee started with defunding. It's hard to negotiate when your effing bosses bitch about it being a “tactical mistake” weeks before the shutdown. WTF! THAT IS TOTAL BULL SHIT. What kind of negotiating is that?
After a week, it was apparent what a colossal failure Obamacare is. BUT because of the backstabbing GOP-e jackasses, the game was lost. The way the GOP-e bosses positioned themselves they couldn't even claim a "We told you so!" And why the hell was Boehner agreeing with Leno that the shutdown was the Republican's fault in particular Cruz's? If I were Boehner I would have said, "Had I known what an epic failure Obamacare was, I wouldn't have caved. And the shutdown was Obama's fault. His Administration knew how bad the law was and he did nothing except shutdown the government." But no, Boehner and the rest of the GOP-e effed Cruz and the American public.
There's yet another contradiction. Isn't negotiation with Obama just the selling out of principles? (we are lectured?)
The battle was lost when we were lectured that killing all CRs in the Senate, even the one the house passed, then in the house House, would defund Obamacare, proven not true, then Obama would blink (and cave) and force Reid to pass a bill that specifically defunds Obamacare.)
Obamacare funding was exempt from the shutdown as it was prefunded.
In fact the shutdown lasted two weeks and then the House passed a number of partial spending bills like funding the troops, AND THOSE PARTIAL SPENDING BILLS DIDN'T DEFUND OBAMACARE. So this was already a partial surrender, but we were lectured that it was brilliant strategy.
I was reminded of the 1960s movie Path's of Glory when the French General demanded his own troops be shelled, then executed, for cowardice, when it was his own plan that was bad.
Sowell has a valid point that this type of lunacy only helps Dems.
No, after a week no-one heard that Obamacare was a failure because the government was shutdown. a shutdown we were promised would repeal Obamacare, and it didn't.
So the first two weeks of Obamacare all the news stories were about when the GOP house would pass a ‘clean’ CR to 'get the government running' again.
Americans would not find out ‘what a colossal failure Obamacare is’ until Bohner put that negotiated CR up for a vote and the government resumed operation mid October.
Yep, ONLY after the ‘surrender’ all news stories were about Obamacare website and cancellations and Obama’s lie.
The two week shutdown protected him from that.