When governors as conservative as Scott Walker find it necessary to tell Congressional Republicans to get a grip, you know something is seriously wrong in the GOP
Republican governors (mostly)
say they hate the Ted Cruz scheme to force a government shutdown unless Democrats and President Obama agree to defund Obamacare. For example:
“I have made the case that Obamacare is not good for the economy, but I have some real concerns about potentially doing something that would have a negative impact on the economy just for the short term — I think there are other ways to pursue this,” said Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who hosted about half of the country’s governors here for the summer meeting of the National Governors Association. [...]
“Many of the members of this party do not want to fund Obamacare, but what we have to do as governors who work with our legislators is realize the reality of being able to get something passed,” [Mississippi Governor Phil] Bryant said.
Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota, Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, and Terry Branstad of Iowa echoed Bryant's and Walker's assessments, with only Bobby Jindal of Louisiana expressing support for the defund Obamacare scheme.
Here's a bit of good news for them, sort of: There's almost no chance of a government shutdown over Obamacare. Republicans don't have the votes to do it in the Senate, and they probably don't have enough in the House.
Over the weekend, Eric Cantor said he would support a continuing resolution to keep government open even if there isn't a bigger budget deal. Not to defend Cantor here, who was anything but brave in his comments (for example, he said the deficit is growing, even though it's shrinking), but that's pretty much a death blow to the defund Obamacare schemers.
The core element of the defund Obamacare plan is to have virtually every single House and Senate Republican refuse to support a continuing resolution unless it defunds Obamacare. Passing a C.R., as Cantor says he thinks Congress should do, would represent the failure of their plan. Perhaps Cantor flip flops, but at least as of now, to say the defund Obamacare plan is on life support would be generous.
This isn't to say that the possibility of a government shutdown is nil. In fact, it's fairly real—but it has much more to do with the complete and total incompetence of House Republicans than the defund Obamacare scheme. Twice now they've failed to pass key spending bills—first on the farm bill, and then last week on transportation and housing. The thing that was amazing is that both of those bills were consistent with the budget that they'd passed earlier this year, but now that it's come time to actually pass legislation consistent with that budget, they can't get enough votes.
Part of the reason for that is that the crazy runs deep on the right—in other words, some House Republicans wanted to cut even more. But it's also because now that they are confronted with the reality of what they'll have to do in order to meet their ridiculous budget goals, a lot of them just don't have the stomach for austerity. In theory, that might say something somewhat good about them, except the problem is instead of doing the logical thing, and backing off their fiscal extremism, they are running for the hills.
In the end, if there's a shutdown, it will be because Republicans who knew better refused to stand up and do anything about it. It will be bad for the country and it will be a political disaster for the GOP, but no matter what Ted Cruz wants, it won't have anything to do with Obamacare. Instead, it will be a monument to the GOP's utter inability to govern at the national level.