In the looming budget fight and the always fun debt ceiling fight, certain Congress members are claiming they will refuse to pass any continuing resolutions or raises to the debt ceiling in order to eliminate Obamacare. In what universe does this idea make sense? If the GOP is successful in a government shutdown, they will be doomed to wander the wilderness for another generation. How is the GOP expecting to turn this threat (especially if it is carried out) into a winning strategy? Obama has a point: Congress passed the law, the Supremes upheld it, and the candidate for President who said he would kill it lost. How can they see political Armageddon as a winning strategy?
It’s a winning strategy for Republicans from safe districts because all they have to worry about is riling up their insane base.
Right. The more moderate House members are more at risk and likely come from swingier districts. The more radical members likely come from more radical districts. So it doesn’t hurt the radicals at the polls to be radical. It can hurt the moderates at the polls to be moderate OR radical.
That’s actually one of the double-edged swords of gerrymandering. You don’t necessarily WANT your radicals to have safe seats, because you usually can’t have a majority with just radicals. You want radicals to have to compromise or they can drive you right out of the majority. I don’t know that this will happen in the coming election, mind you, but giving radicals of any stripe safe seats just means they can cause trouble for those non-radicals who have to work with them.
Well, it wasn’t a winner for the Republicans back in the nineties, so it probably won’t be a winner now, and I think Boehner knows that.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a contingent of congresscritters that A) hates Obamacare and B) doesn’t like the rest of the government anyway, so forcing a shutdown is a win-win for them.
But it IS a winner for the Republicans clamoring for it, which so far are still the minority. Boehner knows damn well it would be insane, and i think the radicals know damn well it is not gonna happen so they can continue to rattle their sabers to score points with the nutjobs.
In addition to the good points already made, there’s also the delusion among some - certainly a minority - of the Republicans insisting on this strategy that they just might win this time. They seem to think that the only reason they haven’t killed Obamacare is that they just haven’t yet hit on the right strategy just yet – and as soon as they do, they will win and it will be repealed.
In reality, this issue is more fundamental, like abortion, gun control, civil rights, etc. There’s just no political tactic you can find to make a pro-life president approve a bill for public financing of abortions. There’s no clever vote to be constructed that would make a pro-marriage equality president sign a law prohibiting adoptions for same sex couples.
I would bet anything that there are a hell of a lot of Republicans who are just going along with this game of chicken just because they don’t want to be perceived as RINOs. But there are more than a handful of Republicans who are so deluded that they simply don’t understand that there is no way to win, and they truly think victory might be at hand.
That’s what really scares me. How can the government work when so many decisions are put in the hand of a vocal minority that simply has no grasp of reality, and yet their compatriots are beholden to their fantastical views?
There would be a big risk of a significant part of the population realizing that some things that they like are because of the government. Of course that would require the Democrats to be able to deliver a coherent message.
The plan doesn’t make sense when analyzed under the assumption that it’s a vote-gathering strategy. It’s not. Like much of politics on the right these days, it’s all about keeping a lucrative business afloat. Here’s one former Republican Congressman’s take on groups like the Club for Growth, a group that routinely attacks Republicans from the right:
As a Democrat, I couldn’t be happier. The GOP created a Frankenstein’s monster in the wake of the 2008 election. Former funding arms of the party like the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, and Americans for Prosperity are now in the driver’s seat, and they know that extremism attracts cash–not just from the rubes in the tri-corner hats, but wealthy donors like the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson, and Peter Thiel. It sells to take positions that make even Grover Norquist look reasonable by comparison:
Well…yes there is, if the goal is to keep the money rolling in.
The final line in the article quotes Chris Chocola, the head of Club for Growth for the past 4 years: “Our job is to never be satisfied.” Exactly: Who’s going to donate to a group that’s satisfied?
The insane faction of the Republican party doesn’t operate on any kind of logic. They are constantly reminded of their failures but are never in doubt that there is a secret majority of Americans that agree with them. In their mind, a government shutdown will hurt only moderate Republicans and Democrats, whom the American people will blame for the shutdown (or, alternatively, cheer the extremists for shutting down waste in government through such gridlock. I know, completely contrarian beliefs, but that’s how they operate).
In their mind, either the Democrats will back down on holding firm to not repealing Obamacare or we’ll shut down the government (and thus waste) and they’ll achieve their goal of reducing government that way. None of their scenarios involve the American people blaming them for shutting down services they want and kicking out the extremists in the midterms. Mitt Romney, not a particular extremist by Republican standards going by his governing history, could not even fathom that the polls were wrong and he’d lose big time, so entrenched was this anti-logic mindset that a person running for the most powerful position in the world actually missed the obvious clues that had been staring him in the face for months. The fact that he was surprised by the loss and didn’t even prepare a concession speech shows just how far down the bottom of the barrel the typical Tea Bagger has fallen and can’t get out
If you said to a Tea Bagger that “The American people generally support Obamacare, likes Obama’s policies, and prefer to tax the rich over cutting spending to the poor”, you might as well be saying it ancient Egyptian because they will not understand you at all
And if you added, “And, according to polls, at least half of those Americans who oppose the ACA, oppose it because it does not go far enough and they want Canadian-style singler-payer or something,” you might as well be barking like a dog.
As I have remarked elsewhere, this issue is, for the Republicans, like rolling around on the ground, wrestling the chipmunks over the Hickory nuts.
If you win, you win a Hickory nut.
And if you lose…you’ve lost to a chipmunk.
But either way, you wind up covered in dirt & dead leaves.
Sigh. There is an insane faction of the Democratic party that doesn’t want to admit that there exist places like Kentucky and Alabama. All politics is local. The “insane” faction of the Republican party that’s shooting for a repeal are doing exactly what the very real, not-very-secret majority of their districts want.
You guys can go on and on about “the majority of Americans,” but what’s that got to do with the gentleman from Mississippi?
Crazy Eddie!*
*Sorry; I’ve been reading the Niven & Pournelle Mote books the past couple of days. 
At least in the 90s, we had both the House and the Senate. So we could actually pass continuing resolutions that obw, eliminated the Department of Education and then Clinton would veto it.
Then you could say that it was CLINTON who was shutting down the government. All he must do is sign and the parks will be open.
It didn’t work then. It certainly won’t work now when we can’t force Obama to veto stuff.
I realize that there are concentrations of constituents who actually do want to repeal Obamacare, but I consider that part of the insanity and I’ll tell you why.
There is no question that the GOP was completely gung-ho about war back when we had a Republican president. Their rapid shift to dovish doubt on Syria is not a reflection of any real change of heart. I feel that the stupid beliefs held by the GOP’s constituency is shaped largely by their elected officials and the likes of talk radio and FOX. I bet they can get easy support from the gentleman from Mississippi or those in Kentucky or Alabama if the conservative media and elected officials shift their message to one of support for Obamacare.
The Tea Bagger grassroots is so stupid as to have no brain of their own, believing whatever their masters tell them. The reason why there are constituents rallying for Obamacare repeal is precisely because the conservative elites have decided that should be the message. The message is being shaped from the top down, not the opposite direction. That’s why I give no credence to some groups of people screaming about death panels or birth certificates, they only care about that because Limbaugh tells them to care about it. Those are fake beliefs created by conservative media, not real concerns of actual conservative Americans. So fuck them. They operate on no logic and there is no secret majority of Americans that agree with them
Some members of Congress feel that this is a matter on principle which they cannot compromise on. So they’re demonstrating this by being willing to shut down the government over the issue. They feel the other side will cave in first because they don’t believe their opponents are as resolute as they are. They also feel that they can claim that it was their opponents that are really to blame for any damages their actions cause due to their unwillingness to give in. And they can be confident that a majority of the voters in their district will accept these claims and support them.
Especially when you consider Obamacare is basically a ripoff of a plan developed by the Heritage Foundation, as an alternative to the Hillarycare scare of the Clinton administration.
Yep. According to the frothing Tea Party right wing, the Heritage Foundation is a den of socialist, Marxist, fascist thugs anxious to use death panels to take drugs away from Grandma and let her die on the street. The freakin’ Heritage Foundation, which is somewhere to the right of Barry Goldwater. That’s how crazy the attitudes have changed, and you’re right … it’s all been driven by big bloviating voices in the conservative mediasphere.
They also know that it won’t affect them one little bit, while millions will suffer for their arrogance and stupidity. These fucking people are morally bankrupt and their actions are unconscionable.
I think by how you wrote this that you are claiming equivalence between the two sides. I don’t know if it’s fair to say “Pay for programs the legislature has agreed to pay for” is either an extreme OR a principled position. It’s just what I would expect of a legislature. (If you weren’t trying to paint a portrait of equivalence, never mind.)
The issue is still not “the majority of the house”, but rather “the majority of the majority” right?
If it comes down to it the sane republicans can join with democrats and pass something the republicans want that the democrats can live with even if they never get the intransigents.