And also too, McConnell endorsed the guy who invented Obamacare
What do you do if you're the Senate Republican leader and you're asked a question about the loopy far-right scheme to force a government shutdown unless Obamacare is effectively repealed? If you're honest, you laugh and dismiss it as the crazy talk that it is. But if you're more worried about fending off a tea party challenger than sounding like a complete idiot, you'd probably do
something like this:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) declined to take a position Tuesday afternoon when asked if he's made a decision about conservative efforts to block a government funding resolution unless Obamacare is defunded.
"We've had a lot of internal discussions about the way forward this fall, on both the continuing resolution and ultimately the debt ceiling. And those dicussions continue," he told reporters at his weekly press conference. "I know they're going on on the House side as well. There's no particular announcement at this point, but you all are familiar with the various points of view about how we might go forward later this year."
Yes, to be "fair" to McConnell, he didn't endorse the defund Obamacare scheme. But if the new standard for politicians in McConnell's position is there's nothing wrong or at least mockable about entertaining ideas as bad as the shutdown threat, our standards have hit rock bottom.
It's such a bad idea that if it weren't for the fact that innocent Americans would suffer, I'd be rooting for the Republicans to go for it. Shutting down the government in order to defund Obamacare would be one of the few things that I think would make Democrats heavy favorites to sweep the 2014 elections.
McConnell almost certainly knows that the the idea is a political disaster waiting to happen, but has so little confidence in his ability to hold onto his Senate seat that he's unwilling to say what he knows to be true, leaving to others the work of stopping the lunatics in his party. It's either that or he's actually considering supporting their shutdown threat. Whichever it is, it's pathetic.