Kamikaze Attack October 25th 1944 Mabalacat Philippines
Even the Tea Party Republicans urging a government shutdown admitted privately they stand little chance of succeeding in halting the Affordable Care Act's with their monumentally disruptive stunt. Now the Wall Street Journal is calling on the Tea Party's to abandon their Quixotic quest to topple the ACA Windmill, before they make the whole GOP look like a bunch of Buffoons to the voters.
The Power of 218
If House Republicans can't hold together, they have no leverage at all.
These critics portrayed the Boehner plan as a sellout because of a campaign that captured the imagination of some conservatives this summer: Republicans must threaten to crash their Zeros into the aircraft carrier of ObamaCare. Their demand is that the House pair the "must pass" CR or the debt limit with defunding the health-care bill. Kamikaze missions rarely turn out well, least of all for the pilots.
The problem is that Mr. Obama is never, ever going to unwind his signature legacy project of national health care. Ideology aside, it would end his Presidency politically. And if Republicans insist that any spending bill must defund ObamaCare, then a showdown is inevitable that shuts down much of the government. Republicans will claim that Democrats are the ones shutting it down to preserve ObamaCare. Voters may see it differently given the media's liberal sympathies and because the repeal-or-bust crowd provoked the confrontation.
The backbenchers are heading into another box canyon now. Mr. Boehner is undermined because the other side knows he lacks 218 GOP votes, which empowers House and Senate Democrats. They want to reverse the modest spending discipline of the sequester, and if the House GOP can't hold together on the CR they will succeed. The only chance of any entitlement reform worth the name is if Mr. Boehner can hold his majority and negotiate from strength.
We've often supported backbenchers who want to push GOP leaders in a better policy direction, most recently on the farm bill. But it's something else entirely to sabotage any plan with a chance of succeeding and pretend to have "leverage" that exists only in the world of townhall applause lines and fundraising letters.
The House Tea Party members aren't any more likely to listen to this advice coming from the WSJ any more than they heeded the WSJ's advice in Immigration Reform.
And speaking of the Tea Party membership's implacable opposition to Immigration Reform it seems the members are out of step with the Tea Party's franchise owners who really control what it does, the Koch Brothers.
is the (tea) party over?
By Doug Thompson
“The tea party is barely a blip on the national radar,” writes Bill Sher of The Week. “What happened?”
The tea party planned to use the just-completed August recess of Congress to mount a national protest campaign against immigration reform but it never really materialized because the people who really run the so-called “grassroots” group are really the billionaire Koch brothers and they support immigration.
So the effort fizzled and some feel that the tea party is dying along with it.
Not quite. The tea party is not dead but it is a far cry from what it used to be and merely a bitter memory to those who once feared it would become a potent political power. The uproar over the targeting of the tea party and other conservative groups by the IRS kept it in the news for a while this year but that has largely faded.
I must be tough on the Tea Party's morale when your Grass Roots group's plans get vetoed by your Grass Root group's owners, the Koch Brothers because they don't go along with them.
Will the Tea Party Kamikazes be able to resist crashing and burning against the "aircraft carrier of ObamaCare"? Somehow judging by their past affinity to grandstanding I very much doubt it.