Wednesday, October 16, 2013

A Tea Party Reality Check From One Of Its Own

by JASmius

Or, "better late than never".  Michael Needham of Heritage Action:





Guess you can put him in the RINO column as well.

A few parting queries from Allahpundit for your studious consideration:

If repeal is obviously impossible because, after all, Democrats control two-thirds of the [electoral] branches of the government, why wasn’t “defund” also impossible for the same reason? I don’t know. If you’re willing to risk serious political injury to yourself by shutting down the government for weeks to extract a crucially important concession, why lower your ask to “defund” instead of going whole hog for repeal? It’s a matter of not blinking, right?

Why did Heritage Action oppose Boehner’s final bill yesterday? The bill was, no doubt, a feeble compromise compared to the lofty ambitions of the “defund” movement, but the only alternative at that point was an even lamer Democratic-written bill in the Senate. By opposing Boehner, Heritage all but guaranteed that he wouldn’t have the votes to pass it, which ensured that Reid would dictate the final terms of the settlement. Where’s the logic in that?

Does it matter at all that shutting down the government didn’t prevent the funding of ObamaCare? The only way to achieve that was to pass a “defund” bill, which, per the above, was all but impossible from the start. All the shutdown did was freeze a few discretionary parts of the budget; the key appropriations for O-Care aren’t among those parts. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in hindsight — having the Healthcare.gov catastrophe start on time and fail epically will do much more to push the White House towards considering delay than the shutdown did. But even that comes with potential bad news: How many low-information voters out there incorrectly believe that it’s the shutdown, not Obama’s and HHS’s incompetence, that’s responsible for the health-care website disaster? Hmmmm.

Hey, if so many LIVs are willing to blame George W. Bush for the shutdown, how implausible is it?




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