Ted Cruz on a fratricide mission.
While House extremists were
happy to vote with the majority to defund Planned Parenthood for a year, that's not enough to deter them from a government shutdown. Neither is the
promise to use reconciliation to force President Obama to veto a defunding bill that leadership has floated. Nope, it's shaping up to be
government shutdown or nothing. And three guesses who their ringleader is.
The idea is aimed at placating conservatives by giving them a way to pass legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of its funding and decouple the issue from the entire federal budget. But conservatives are balking at the proposal to use the majority-vote reconciliation process, calling it a "ruse" that, in the end, would leave Planned Parenthood's federal funding intact and amount to little more than a feel-good exercise.
Even if Republicans used reconciliation to get a bill to President Barack Obama's desk, he would veto it, they note.
"The American people aren’t interested in a show vote; they want to actually get it done," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a brief interview about the potential strategy. "Setting it up for the president to veto doesn't solve the problem."
Cruz and his merry band of nihilists remain convinced that they can force Obama to the negotiating table, and that the only way to do that is by shutting down government. They remain committed to this strategy, presumably, because they are incapable of learning. How incapable?
This incapable: leadership showed member in a meeting on Thursday polling demonstrating that Republicans would be blamed, again, if government shut down. And they reject it.
Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), another conservative who wants to defund Planned Parenthood through a government-funding bill, also said GOP leaders think the data showed Republicans would be responsible.
"I don't think it's an accurate picture of everything," he added. "As I mentioned, there's nobody in the conference that wants a shutdown. Nobody wants that, but I think that the president ultimately has to either put up or shut up. […] Our leaders wave the white flag every time there's any kind of a confrontation," he said.
Of course, none of these guys pushing shutdown are worried about their own seats, and their own seats are all that matters. I hope federal agencies are getting their contingency plans in shape, because its looking like nothing is going to get in the way of their fratricide mission.