Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been telling anyone who will listen that he's not going to allow a government shutdown on his watch. He's still saying that, and says he'll
work with President Obama to make sure it doesn't happen.
The Kentucky Republican said he would work with the White House to come up with budget levels to keep the government open past Sept. 30, conceding that President Barack Obama won’t sign a measure with a rider defunding Planned Parenthood. [...]
During the wide-ranging interview, McConnell also responded to a viewer who questioned him on cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood. McConnell said he had led on the issue, but that the numbers were against him.
"We just don't have the votes to get the outcome that we'd like," McConnell said. "I would remind all of your viewers: The way you make a law in this country, the Congress has to pass it and the president has to sign it. The president has made it very clear he's not going to sign any bill that includes defunding of Planned Parenthood, so that’s another issue that awaits a new president hopefully with a different point of view about Planned Parenthood."
In other words, Planned Parenthood is going to remain an issue in the 2016 campaign, but McConnell isn't going to let his leadership go down in flames over it. However, McConnell's chief problem remains: Ted Cruz. He's going to have to do some tricky maneuvering around Cruz—and possibly Rand Paul, who actually is still running for president, though you wouldn't know it. One advantage for McConnell is that there is such universal bipartisan loathing for Cruz among his colleagues that he'll have lots of help in trying to shut Cruz down, but it's going to take some tricky parliamentary maneuvering. Or locking Cruz in a closet in the cloakroom for the duration.
But the Senate isn't McConnell's only problem. Over on the House side, Speaker John Boehner's problem children are perfectly willing and able to do Cruz's bidding on this. Ample experience has proven that Boehner really doesn't have any power to control them. He's going to have to go back to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats to get it done, just like McConnell is going to have to work with President Obama and the Democrats on his side.
And that means the fissure within the GOP is just going to keep on growing and McConnell and Boehner will become even weaker within their conferences and the presidential candidates will keep on running against them as the problem in Washington. All of which sets up the next big fight after funding the government—raising the debt ceiling. It's going to be an ugly autumn.