Free Republic

....The most important thing the Republicans have to do is make any default Obama’s responsibility. The way to do that is for them to pass today—a “clean” debt ceiling increase to cover a period of two or three months and keep the government shut down. Forget passing anything else, including any conditions attached to the debt ceiling increase. Obama and Reid will use whatever appendages a bill has attached to it as an excuse to turn it down.If the Republicans do that,there’s still a chance to turn the tables on Obama......The key is to keep the government shut down while...

<p>Need evidence of Cruz's gains of late? He won the 2016 straw poll at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday with 42 percent of the vote and his speech at that gathering of social conservatives was received very warmly. He has become the center of gravity for a certain not-insignificant element of the Republican party. Cruz has proven that he will be “the Tea Party’s one true standard-bearer in the Republican presidential primary,” according to Evan Smith,the CEO and editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune,a independent media outlet covering the Long Star State.</p>

The dance we are watching this weekend is a very important moment in modern American history with big implications for how the executive and the legislative branches interact in the future. The House Republicans have staked out a position that they can use their constitutional power of the purse to force the President to negotiate over key issues. President Obama and Senate Democratic Leader Reid believe they can break the House Republicans and force them to reopen the government and pass a debt ceiling hike with no negotiations and no conditions. Senate Republicans are split between a majority who want...

WASHINGTON — Next year was supposed to be a prime opportunity for Republicans to retake the Senate. And for a while, everything seemed to be breaking their way: a wave of Democratic retirements, a fluke in the electoral map that put a large number of races in states that President Obama lost, a strong farm team of conservative Senate hopefuls from the House. Then the government shut down. Now, instead of sharpening their attacks on Democrats, Republicans on Capitol Hill are being forced to explain why they are not to blame and why Americans should trust them to govern both...

October 11, 2013Michael Needham: The Strategist Behind the Shutdown By STEPHEN MOORE "I really believe we are in a great position right now," says Michael Needham, the 31-year-old president of Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the nation's largest conservative think tank. By "we" he means the Republican Party and the conservative movement; their "great position" refers to the potential to win the political battle over the government shutdown. Though Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is the public face of the high-risk strategy to "defund" ObamaCare, the masterminds behind it are a new generation of young conservatives, chief among them Mr....

The House voted unanimously Saturday morning to approve a bipartisan bill ensuring furloughed federal workers receive backpay once the government shutdown ends. The vote on the Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act was 407-0. Twenty-five members didn't vote. The measure now moves to the Senate, where it is expected to pass. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) had introduced a Senate version of the bill earlier this week.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Their government has failed to keep the doors open and has told federal workers to stay off the job as the political parties fight over spending and health care in austere times. Now Congress and President Barack Obama are sending this message to the 800,000 sidelined government employees: We don't know when the impasses will end but you will get reimbursed for lost pay once the government reopens. With the partial shutdown entering its fifth day, the GOP-run House passed a bill Saturday that would make sure the furloughed workers get paid for not working. The White...

Why is it just assumed Republicans will automatically be blamed for any government shutdown over a budgetary impasse between Obama and his Democratic Party and Republicans? More disturbingly, why do so many Republicans and right-leaning commentators surrender before we've even begun to fight? Do our moderates believe there is any position President Obama and the Democrats could take that would result in the public's blaming Democrats, rather than Republicans, for a shutdown? The moderates always cite polls that say Republicans will be blamed, but who decreed that polls are set in stone? Which Republicans, when they were campaigning for election,...

FR won't let me post the link to Military Times, but the story is there ...

I'd love to read a few articles entitled: "Obama Threatens to Shut Down Government", "Democrats Threaten to Shut Down Government", "Harry Reid Threatens to Shut Down Government". Those would be the truth in bold print. "Truth in Advertising" so to speak. The reality is that democrat politicians are throwing temper tantrums over adding one more exemption to the huge pile of exemptions they've already issued. They've given exemptions to their fat cats, big businesses, and corporate welfare pals. They've given exemptions to countless cronies. They've even given an exemption to themselves after this really odd whining about ObamaCare draining their...

Democrats and the White House warn that a government shutdown over the budget impasse and the fight over ObamaCare will damage the economy. Those on the front lines of the economy seem ready to make that sacrifice, at least for a while. According to a poll last week from Pepperdine University, 48% of small-business owners back a government shutdown — some for as long as three months: Down to the final days of the nation’s current spending plan, with negotiations over a new one at a standstill, nearly half of small business owners are in favor of shutting the government...

Health care rollout would proceed if government shuts down, uninsured would still get covered WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans pulling on the budget thread can't neatly unravel President Barack Obama's health care law. A partial government shutdown next week would leave the major parts of the law in place and rolling along, according to former Democratic and Republican budget officials, as well as the Obama administration itself. Health care markets for the uninsured would open as scheduled on Tuesday. Deleting the money to implement the law, the GOP's dream scenario, would indeed cripple Obamacare. But that's much less likely to happen...

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn criticized Texas’ Sen. Ted Cruz for misleading the American people over Obamacare. “To create the impression that we can actually defund Obamacare, when the only thing we control, and barely, is the House of Representatives, is not intellectually honest,” Coburn said on Thursday’s Morning Joe.

The movie Braveheart stands as one of the classics of all time. Embodying the courage of William Wallace in his fight to overturn English rule over Scotland, the movie is a testimony to the power of an individual who is willing to risk it all for freedom. In honor of those like Representative Tom Graves (R-Ga.), and Senators Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), who are battling both their own leaders (the Scottish noblemen) who fear for their position, as well as Obama and Harry Reid (the English), a few of the key lines from brilliantly written Braveheart are...

Rand Paul calls Ted Cruz's tactics "not necessarily fair".

**snip**Despite the potential viability of this course of action, many on both left and right believe that a government shutdown is a guaranteed disaster for the GOP. Shutdown-phobia has been the conventional wisdom in Washington for nearly two decades. A close look at the evidence, however, reveals a not-so-shocking truth: Washington is wrong. There is zero measurable historical evidence that suggestions of shutting down the government will be electorally damaging to the Republican Party. None. Republicans held the House and Senate before the last partial shutdown. They held it after. Bill Clinton's approval ratings cratered from 53% when the first...

Ted Cruz is brilliant to filibuster before Healthcare open enrollment. Now that Ted Cruz has forced attention on the train wreck that is Obamacare and Forced the Elites in Washington DC to LISTEN to the myriad of folks who are hurting because of this Obamination of a law, now that He had Forced the press to report on his filibuster, stories will now start trickling out before the dam bursts on the broken families, the broken businesses and the broken economy Obamacare is creating. Ted Cruz read story after story, written by folks hurting badly because of Obamacare. Stories of...

So House Republicans have passed and sent to the Senate a budget that includes no funding for the Affordable Care Act, setting up a political showdown that could result in a government shutdown. We wish the GOP luck, since we support the policy if not the strategy. [Snip] That starts with Senators Mike Lee (Utah) and Ted Cruz (Texas), who joined with a handful of conservative groups to force Speaker John Boehner's hand. In July they had vowed to mobilize a grass-roots "army" to support ObamaCare repeal. The legions never arrived, but the activists still insisted that any continuing resolution...

Excellent Senate statements by Ted Cruz re: Obamacare and the Democrat threats to shutdown the government. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26T2WtrlqsQ

Even most Republicans, in their candid moments, admit that the Affordable Care Act won't be defunded. But for former Vice Presidential Nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, that's not good enough. "We’d like to believe that the GOP establishment would applaud the way [Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee] have rallied the grassroots to their cause," Palin writes, in an op-ed penned for the conservative website Breitbart. "But, no, such praise would require a commensurate level of guts and leadership, and the permanent political class in D.C. is nothing if not gutless and rudderless." "But the permanent political class is...