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What will Republicans choose

What will they choose?

  • Vote to defund Obamacare

    Votes: 38 66.7%

  • Avoid a shutdown

    Votes: 19 33.3%
  • Total voters
    57
  • Poll closed .
Republicans Give In Right Before Obamacare Would Have Been Repealed

After Republican lawmakers reached a last-minute agreement Wednesday night to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, sources confirmed today that the GOP yielded its fight against Obamacare mere moments before the president was about to cave and repeal the entire law. “Whew! That was a close one,” President Obama told reporters, admitting that literally seconds before he would have put pen to paper on an executive order to fully defund and eliminate the Affordable Care Act, he received a phone call informing him that House Speaker John Boehner had agreed to back down from the shutdown stalemate. “The GOP really had our backs up against the wall on this one, and to be honest I was definitely about to blink first. I sure as hell didn’t want to be the president who oversaw the first default in our country’s history, and I thought the Republicans knew that. If they would have just held out a little longer—I’m talking two, three seconds—they would have gotten everything they wanted. They seriously held all the cards here.” The president said that if House Republicans threaten to use the same tactics with the debt ceiling this February, he’ll probably just repeal Obamacare immediately.
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This guy gives the Pubs a victory for keeping their issues on the table front and center.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/17/opinion/zelizer-gop-victory/index.html?hpt=po_c1

As the dust settles, Republicans might find themselves pretty content with the outcome of this battle. In terms of public policy, they have kept the President on the defensive and kept their main issue front and center.
Throughout much of the past month and a half, when the President hoped to return from the congressional recess to push the immigration bill through the House, all attention has centered on sequestration, repealing the Affordable Care Act, cutting spending and avoiding fiscal catastrophe.
All of the other energy has been sucked out of Washington. Even with the current deal, the sequestration remains in effect, severely harming government agencies that have undergone cuts as well as those in desperate need of funding increases.Congress and the administration will now embark on more extensive discussions about budget reform that will consume the attention of both parties until the middle of January. For now, sequestration remains in place, leaving many agencies with insufficient funds.
The battle has also been beneficial to Republicans in that they have continued the process of normalizing the use of radical tactics in pushing for cuts to the federal government.
Just as many Americans seemed to accept sequestration, conservative Republicans have not yet felt any serious political threat as a result of their having forced a government shutdown.
Nor is it clear that there will be any negative consequences to them for having gone to the brink of a federal default in their fight for concessions on the budget deal. If they are left standing, there is little reason to think that they won't use these tactics once again. The last month offers them a template.
Furthermore, the current deal simply postpones any decision and actually sets up another round of fights when Congress returns from its winter break in December. The new year will look very much like the one that came before.
Given the pattern we have seen, conservative Republicans will be just as likely, even more likely, to employ the same kind of aggressive tactics and try to force the administration into accepting deep cuts in domestic spending if Obama wants to keep the economy in stable condition.
9 things we missed during the shutdown
Conservatives will be even more emboldened as they seek to please their constituents going into the 2014 midterm elections. The deal that emerged from the Senate is simply a continuation of the kind of political chaos that we have witnessed since the 2010 midterms. Obama will have to start fighting on this issue as soon as the ink is dry.
Obama has spent much of his second term on defense, responding to pressure from House Republicans to cut spending and trying to combat their use of radical procedural weapons.
This crisis was clearly the most dangerous moment for the country. And it is true that Obama and congressional Democrats walk away having achieved important objectives. After all, the government is up and running again, at least for the time being, and Congress has raised the debt ceiling, thereby averting a global meltdown.
But Republicans have defined the national agenda and forced a deal that doesn't resolve debate. Just the opposite: It ensures that the fights will continue and the threat of default continues into the foreseeable future.
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Three letters to W-SJ today:

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A matter of time

Even though it didn’t seem to accomplish much, I appreciate the tea party for taking the fight to the president. Obamacare may be the law of the land for now, but every vote against it has been for me and for everyone else who believes in freedom. When people see how truly horrible it is, we’ll get rid of that scourge. People will line up – literally – to vote solid conservatives back into office. It’s just a matter of time.

And make no mistake – the Democrats enjoyed every minute of the government shutdown. It made them look good. It doesn’t bother them to see World War II monuments closed or national parks closed. As long as they can keep the populace dependent on government programs, they’ll be happy.

The pendulum swings both ways. The decadence of the liberals will just pave the path for a conservative resurgence.

LELAND STOAT

WINSTON-SALEM


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More is needed

Those who are criticizing the Republicans for shutting down the government over Obamacare and our bloated budget fail to see the big picture.

We’ve been spending like drunken sailors for decades – the situation is simply unsustainable. We can’t keep spending more than we take in. We’ve got to get control of the budget.

And even if spending has been cut under President Obama, he’s not helping the situation. He still wants us to spend too much.

Sequestration was no great tragedy; why not cut some more? So what if a few monuments are closed? We can always just walk around the fences.

PAUL WILMOUTH

WINSTON-SALEM


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Hurt the country

U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is a conservative's conservative. Liberals hate him for his hard stance against any reasonable solution to our immigration problems and his paranoia about Muslims and conservatives love him for ... well, pretty much the same thing.

So when he said, about the government shutdown, “the Republicans should not have started this,” and “closing the government down was the wrong thing to do,” both liberals and conservatives should listen to what he says.

He was furthermore on the record saying, “Even if this bill passed tonight, what would it have done? After shutting down the government for two and a half weeks, laying off 800,000 people, all the damage we caused, all we would end up doing was taking away health insurance from congressional employees. That's it? That's what you go to war for? That's what we shut down the United States government for?”

In the meantime, the rank-and-file tea-party supporters know the backlash is coming. They know someone's going to have to pay for this monumental blunder, so they do what they always do: blame the black guy.

If they're going to back policies and politicians that cause a meltdown of our economic strength, they should at least have the guts to own it. Instead, they cower and point the finger elsewhere.

It's time to say goodbye to these idiots. They have literally done nothing but hurt the country with their backward, anti-fact, anti-government, shamelessly dishonest, bigoted imitation of patriotism.

LINDA PATRICK

WINSTON-SALEM
 
dot com said:
The Cruz-ectomy is in full swing
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Don't see any of this ending well for Cruz. Tea Party populists hate Wall Street and elites, and Cruz's wife works for Goldman Sachs and he refused to study with people from lesser Ivies like Penn and Brown while he was at Harvard Law. Can't imagine any of his wife's colleagues are too stoked about Cruz flirting with default.
 
Senate Minority Leader Ted Cruz
 
So are 2014 and 2016 going to be all out GOP civil war? Tea Party vs the establishment?
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/...down_n_5424416.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

"Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has a message for the Republican Party's "greybeards" -- don't discount the impact of last year's government shutdown.

Speaking at the 2014 Republican Leadership Conference on Saturday, Cruz insisted that October 2013's antics are helping the party in its midterm election fights.

"They’re reaping the fruits of the battle, which is perfectly fine," Cruz said, according to the Washington Post. "But we need to take a moment to acknowledge the lesson of the battle.”
 
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Cruz would lose some blood red states like Indiana. Hillary could approach 400 EVs against him.
 
WFFaithful said:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.co...d-gop-to-retake-congress-this-fall/?hpt=hp_t2

"(CNN) – Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has won another straw poll, boosting his national profile and elevating his name among potential 2016 presidential contenders."
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Top three in the straw poll were Cruz, Ben Carson, and Rand Paul. Pretty clear that Obama's lack of experience has hurt him as President. Cruz and Paul are also first term Senators and Carson's never held political office. How many rational people would allow a career pol with no surgical experience to perform brain surgery on one of their kids?
 
What's hurt Obama the most is the insanely obstructionist Republicans. Other than total capitulation to their agenda, he couldn't get them to anything. It was their stated policy from the night he took office. They gleefully spoke about it.

It was unprecedented in US history.

I'm not saying he didn't make any mistakes. I'm saying they didn't make much difference.
 
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