Reading freeper diaries I stumbled upon a link to this;
Michael Needham: The Strategist Behind the Shutdown
First things first. The author of the WSJ article is Stephen Moore. He is one of them and he also worked at the Heritage Foundation, Michael Needham is the CEO of Heritage Action, the front lines arm of the foundation in existance since 2010.
I understand the influence of the Koch bros on the Tea Party and even the work of people like Edwin Meese. The Kochs donate to Heritage and Edwin Meese has been involved with the foundation since 1988.
This Faux News article sums up the initial shutdown brainstrorm;
Government Shutdown Was Planned For Months By Ed Meese, Koch Bros
The Heritage Foundation is a pervasive influence on the Tea Party/GOP.
So from the article above about Needham;
Though Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is the public face of the high-risk strategy to "defund" ObamaCare, the masterminds behind it are a new generation of young conservatives, chief among them Mr. Needham. From a tactical view, the strategy has been deployed with precision. In August, only Mr. Cruz and a band of renegade tea-party Republicans in the House favored this approach, and the media collectively scoffed. But by September, House Republicans couldn't pass a budget without attaching the defunding rider that has grounded much of government.
If the right wing of politics were a football team, Heritage Foundation would be the coach and Heritage Action the quarterback.
Here he is explaining the whole strategy and American conservatism;
But things have not worked out like he planned. He gave the ball to Ted Cruz and Cruz fumbled. Obama picked up the ball and is running to the goal line and he is at the 5 yard line.
We are not talking about Obamacare anymore in spite of Needham's claim;
"We just spent the last three months talking about nothing else but ObamaCare. It has been on the front page of every newspaper. The polls show ObamaCare's more unpopular than ever. People are starting to wake up that it isn't going to work at all," he says. "Even Jon Stewart of 'The Daily Show' is making fun of the law." On Monday, Mr. Stewart had Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as a guest, Mr. Needham notes, and the host "bet that he could download every movie ever made before she could log on to the ObamaCare website."
The Tea Party/GOP is in disarray. In desperation they went after the debt limit which made things worse. And the Dems are running behind Obama blocking any attempts to tackle him.
But Needham doesn't get it;
Mr. Needham thinks, by the way, that the stalemate may drag on well beyond Oct. 17, the day the U.S. Treasury may reach the federal borrowing limit. He has little problem with the latest strategy to pass a temporary debt-ceiling extension, viewing the debt-default debate as a distraction from the battle over the future of ObamaCare funding.
President Obama is the one in an "untenable position," Mr. Needham says. It is "totally unfair to say, 'We're going to give a delay of the employer mandate, but we will not give that same delay to the individual mandate, and we're going to exempt members of Congress.' A united conservative party making the case, day in and day out, about the fundamental unfairness of the way the president is implementing this law is a winning argument," he says. And it "inspires people and gets them on our side."
Untenable? I believe that Needham is the one in the untenable position. I wonder if he will still be there next year. And I believe that October 17 is the day Obama crosses the goal line and scores a touchdown for the ages.
So how did this 31 year old know it all get to such prominent position? He and Ted Cruz will be the scapegoats. But who cares. It's the end of Heritage Foundation conservatism in America. This is the superbowl of politcs.