Heads-Up !!! - 'Your Government Is Our Leverage' - Slate

[WillyT]

Your Government Is Our Leverage
Republicans say they’ll extend the shutdown as a weapon in the debt ceiling fight.
By William Saletan - Slate
OCT. 3 2013

<snip>

Three days into the federal shutdown, Republicans are beginning to admit that, contrary to everything they told us, they didn’t really close the government to stop Obamacare. They did it, and will keep doing it, to gain leverage in the coming fight over the debt ceiling. The government will stay shut for the next two weeks so that the GOP can accumulate power.

This isn’t Democratic spin. It’s what Republicans themselves are telling reporters, particularly the conservative media. Last night in the Washington Examiner, David Drucker reported:

House GOP leaders and most of their rank and file never supported conservatives' efforts to use the budget bill and the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare … But having gone as far as they have, House Republicans now say they won't back down. And they expect to score political points in the process.

The real target, according to Drucker’s sources, is the deadline for raising the debt ceiling, which is two weeks away:

<House> Republicans said Wednesday that the spending impasse that shut down the government early Tuesday is less about conservatives' desire to derail Obamacare than it is about strengthening their hand in the debt-ceiling talks. … “We’re not going to be disrespected,” conservative Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., added. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

Drucker’s account matches what Republicans are telling other outlets. In the Washington Post, Paul Kane reports that House Speaker John Boehner never wanted to use the shutdown threat to stop Obamacare. Nevertheless, Boehner joined this assault in order to head off a “rebellion” in his caucus. As a result, the speaker has:

kept sending the Senate bills that would completely defund or delay the health-care law, knowing it would lead to a shutdown. … Now that Boehner has survived several days of the shutdown, his friends say there is no point in moving a clean funding resolution. They said the shutdown is leverage in talks with Obama and the Democrats about lifting the debt ceiling.

On Wednesday, according to Robert Costa of the National Review...

<snip>

More: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2013/10/shutdown_leverage_forget_obamacare_republicans_are_using_the_shutdown_as.html

[WillyT]

1. G'Night Kick !!!

[WillyT]

2. Morning Kick !!!

[WillyT]

3. And Another...

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. rec!

[TreasonousBastard]

5. I don't get how this gives them leverage...

the more this goes on more people feel it and it can't make them look good.

[WillyT]

6. Here Ya Go...

Wait, I don’t get it. Why would so many Republicans vote against something they privately support?

It might be true that the vast majority of Republicans in Congress just want this fiscal mess to end before it does any more damage to the GOP. But those sentiments are only theoretical. And there are a number of strategic considerations that come into play for Republicans at this stage of the game.

If House Republicans were to break with Boehner and join with Democrats to pass a clean CR, it would be a giant rebuke to Boehner, hand a major political victory to Obama, and make the political fallout from the shutdown completely for naught.

Moreover, the only real leverage Republicans have left is the debt ceiling deadline on Oct. 17. If Republicans were to concede defeat on the CR and vote for the clean spending measure at this stage, it would be a vote to deprive themselves of leverage and diminish the chances of winning any concession whatsoever from the administration or Senate Democrats.

From: http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/04/20821505-can-gop-end-the-shutdown-now-maybe-not?lite

[TreasonousBastard]

7. OK, I get that but, it doesn't so much give them leverage as a possible way to...

sneak out of the box they built themselves into. If they've got to shut it all down, a better plan would have been to shut it down over something more critical than Obamacare.

Methinks the torches and pitchforks are out for the Cruz who designed the box.