Thursday, July 30, 2015

GOP Willing To Risk Government Shutdown To Defund Planned Parenthood?

by JASmius



Eh, maybe.  They were willing to do so a couple of years ago over ObamaCare defunding, at least for a while, and Planned Parenthood's illegal cannibalism has stirred up enough public disgust and outrage and sufficiently aroused the GOP grassroots that Boehner and McConnell will have to make some sort of at least token effort.

But it will still be the next episode of Failure Theater:

As controversy surrounding the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood continues to swirl, congressional Republicans are vowing to defund the group even if it forces a government shutdown, Politico reported.

On Wednesday, eighteen House Republicans told the leadership that they "cannot and will not support any funding resolution … that contains any funding for Planned Parenthood."

If that number were 218, we could rest easy.  But surely there must be thirty RINOs who will break the other way to keep the Planned Parenthood gravy train intact, right?

And social conservatives like Senators James Lankford of Oklahoma and Jeff Sessions of Alabama have said they would potentially introduce a rider to the spending bill that would eliminate the group's $528 million public funding.

"This is one of those line-in-the-sand type of issues," South Carolina-5 GOP Representative Mick Mulvaney told Politico. "Every time we say we don't want to spend money on something, the answer is it will provoke a shutdown." 
In the Senate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz is leading the charge, saying next week's Senate roll call to defund the group is a "legislative show vote" and he plans to do everything possible to force the issue, not barring a government shutdown.

All our troops are certainly saying the right things and making very good and valid points:

Sessions said Republicans "don't need to take no for an answer" after Democrats reject the provisions to defund it next week.

"Congress doesn't have to fund any program it doesn't think is justified. How does it get to be that a minority of the Democrats can dictate that a majority party has to fund programs it doesn't believe in?" Sessions said, according to Politico. "We don't need to go at it halfheartedly."

That's a question that a lot of us have been asking ourselves for a very long time, Senator.  And the answer is always the same: Whether in the majority or the minority, the Democrats run the country, and Republicans are powerless to stop them.  Period.

Largely because of the RINO mindset:

Republican lawmakers can forget about defunding Planned Parenthood for now — because it will never happen with a Democrat president in the White House, Senator Lindsey Graham tells Newsmax TV.

"We may get a majority but we'll never get a bill signed into law that defunds Planned Parenthood because Obama won't sign it," Graham, a South Carolina Republican and GOP presidential candidate, said Thursday on The Steve Malzberg Show.

"So if you want to defund Planned Parenthood, replace Obama, and do a lot of things that we would like, like build the [Keystone] pipeline, you'd better get a new president."

That was a more persuasive argument before the GOP retook the Senate last fall.  Now it misses the point of having unified control of Congress: (1) The power to set the agenda and (2) the power to determine the front-burner issues of the 2016 campaign to come.  This is what the Democrats have always done when they've been in the majority facing a Republican White House: pass their agenda, make the President veto one bill after another, rally their base, and then their candidates run on "Republican obstructionism" and "do-nothingism" and "the party of no," etc.  It's one of the primary advantages of controlling Congress, to make the opposition POTUS react to them instead of vice versa, to put the opposition on the defensive, to built political and electoral momentum.

Senator Graham purports to seek the right ends but he denies us the means.  He's not wrong that the inevitable Obama veto makes Planned Parenthood defunding impossible as a practical matter; but getting every last elected Democrat on record as voting in favor of PP's Naziesque butchery and accompanying illegal profiteering is part of the path to gaining even more seats and, most important of all, regaining the White House and unifying the government under Republican control.

In which case the GOP still wouldn't be able to defund Planned Parenthood without Mitchie The Kid "going nuclear":

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is also leading the charge to defund the pro-choice organization.

He said on Fox News' Hannity on Wednesday that he thinks there are fifty-eight senators who will vote for defunding, according to Breitbart....

He said he believes that there's at least three or four Democrats that could cross over and vote with the Republicans.

Or two votes short of breaking the inevitable Democrat filibuster, after which McConnell will wave the white flag, cave on full funding plus more for Planned Parenthood, and shrug and tell us, "Hey, we tried."  No matter what you might think, I don't enjoy being a killjoy and buzzkiller, but we all know this is going to be the endgame, shutdown or no shutdown.  Why should we get our hopes up?

I'd love to be wrong about this, but I'd also love to have somebody persuasively explain to me why I won't be spot on target.

Again.


UPDATE: Guess who was for Planned Parenthood before he was against it:

Until the eve of his presidential campaign, Jeb Bush was director of a philanthropy that gave tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and financed its advocacy of “unrestricted access to abortion” around the world. The charity also approved money to global abortion providers while he sat on its board.

In 2010, Jeb was named one of the founding directors of the Bloomberg Family Foundation, established as a tax-exempt foundation to advance the vision of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He resigned from the board at the end of 2014 to prepare his presidential campaign.

The Bloomberg Philanthropies announced a $50 million undertaking to expand “reproductive health,” including lobbying foreign nations to loosen restrictions on abortion.

Bloomberg announced a major partnership with Planned Parenthood – Global to train equip abortion [extrem]ists in pro-life countries. [emphasis added]

And no, Bush III's was not just a ceremonial position:

Bloomberg Philanthropies noted in a press release, “The directors will serve in an advisory and oversight capacity.” Bush earned $37,100 in compensation for his nearly five years of service.

“Bush’s people are probably right that as a board member he did not vote on every project,” Stephen Phelan, the director of mission communications at Human Life International, told LifeSiteNews. “But Bloomberg has been so open about his foundation’s goals for so long that it really stretches credibility to say that Bush or his people wouldn’t have known that the foundation pushes abortion and other population control efforts.”

Bloomberg clarified his goals while accepting his Planned Parenthood award last year. “You can’t fight every battle,” he said. “The things that are high on my priority list are sensible gun laws…I obviously care about a woman’s right to choose…Nobody’s a bigger supporter of gay rights.” He added that “we need a good immigration bill” that provides amnesty for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, “so we can continue our economy.”

Bloomberg has described abortion as a “fundamental human right, elevating it to a make-or-break position. “On this issue, you’re either with us or against us.” He once cited abortion among his reasons for endorsing Barack Obama in 2012.

House Bush is only "conservative" when one of them is seeking high elective office.  The rest of the time they're as filthy leftwingnut as any Democrat.  There's no way on Earth that Jeb couldn't have been aware of Bloomie's mission statement litany of Marxist-Alinskyist horrors.  He happily marinated in that poisonous swill for five years....until he resigned in order to run for president as a "conservative".

When Tea Partiers call "establishment" Republicans "snakes" and "liars" and "cockroaches," this is the kind of asshole they're talking about.  If they could ever develop political knowledge and discernment to match that passion, perhaps the Right could actually get someplace.  Stopping a third Bush presidency in a generation would be a really good place to start.

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