Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
is still telling anyone who will listen that there will not be a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood on his watch. Republican strategists
beg to differ.
"There's real potential for fireworks in the Senate in September," said Matt Mackowiak, a GOP strategist and president of Potomac Strategy Group.
"I expect Cruz and Rand, particularly, to use this fight to collect as much data as possible and to earn as much media as possible," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised to see microsites launched and email addresses collected and small dollar donations raised." […]
Political strategists and analysts are skeptical that Republicans wouldn't be blamed for a shutdown, as polls indicated they were in 2013.
"We've done this now with immigration and we've done it with ObamaCare, so we know how it plays out," said John Feehery, president of QGA Public Affairs who also served as the top spokesman to former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).
"It's still a headache because there's a lot of pressure put on both McConnell and Boehner from the Ted Cruz fundraising machine," he said.
Do Cruz or Paul care at all that they could be putting the Republicans' majority in the Senate at risk? Of course they don't. They have presidential campaigning to do. That and the fact that no one besides themselves exists in their political universes. Cruz in particular has to keep up his whole
"God chose me to shut down Planned Parenthood" schtick so that he can keep that key evangelical far right onboard. Paul just needs a reason to still be in the presidential race. And Marco Rubio, who arguably still has a chance at not totally embarrassing himself as a presidential candidate needs to find something to make a dent in Donald Trump.
McConnell is dreaming if he thinks he can make all that go away, or that he can rely on House Speaker John Boehner to whip House Republicans into following him. Not when they're openly plotting a coup.