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UCmeNdc's JournalCrisis? What Crisis? GOP questions if there really is a problem here.
How House Republicans are convincing themselves that defaulting on the country’s debt wouldn’t be the disaster everybody claims it’d be.
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In the conservative media, this is the biggest story that the lamestream press won’t cover. And it is a story: It doesn’t make sense that some government sites are tagged with “shutdown” closed signs when most of their content is readable. Over the weekend, conservatives puzzled at how the Amber Alert website went offline. The administration explained it as a minor outage; conservatives saw it as an application of the “firemen first” strategy.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/10/house_republicans_debt_default_and_government_shutdown_the_gop_thinks_the.html
A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning by the GOP
WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131006&_r=0
Dennis Ross, GOP Rep: 'Pride' Is Why Republicans Won't Budge On Government Shutdown
WASHINGTON -- With the government shutdown in its fifth day, many Republicans have conceded the fight is no longer about Obamacare. Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) added his name to the list on Saturday, saying the matter now boils down to "pride."
"I think now it’s a lot about pride," he added.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/dennis-ross-government-shutdown_n_4050231.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Darkness In Washington
Ryan Lizza’s excellent Daily Comment last week explained the lay of the American political landscape in the clearest possible terms, backed up by numbers: a faction of congressional Republicans, many, if not most, in the South, representing ideologically extreme, heavily white districts that were drawn by Republican-controlled state legislatures after the 2010 elections so as to keep those seats Republican in perpetuum, have their party in a chokehold—and with it, at the moment, the federal government. Eighty House members, Lizza wrote, barely a third of the Republican caucus, most of them new to Congress, forced Speaker John Boehner to reverse his public position and refuse to fund the government after September 30th unless Democrats agreed to gut the Affordable Care Act.
One question Lizza didn’t raise is why Boehner allowed himself to be pushed onto a course that’s so self-destructive—not just for the country but for his party—that a conservative pundit called the House rebels “the suicide caucus.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2013/10/darkness-in-washington.html
House Democrats Unveil Discharge Petition To Force End To Shutdown
House Democrats announced Friday that they will try to force the House to vote on a measure to fully fund the government -- and end the shutdown -- with a procedural motion known as a discharge petition.
Democrats unveiled their plan at a Friday afternoon press conference. Their resolution would fund the government through Nov. 15 at the same levels as the Senate-passed continuing resolution. And, like the Senate bill, there would be no strings attached related to delaying or defunding Obamacare.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/discharge-petition-government-shutdown_n_4044967.html
Spineless Boehner's big political fail
The speaker’s closest allies say he cannot afford to defy those on his right flank by ending the shutdown with largely Democratic votes.
Doing so would undermine his position among his members going into negotiations with the White House and Democrats over raising the federal debt limit, which Boehner and his leadership team regard as more critical than the impasse on government funding. Coming up empty-handed for conservatives on both would have broader ramifications.
Republicans who support the speaker argue that if he is going to antagonize the conservatives in his caucus, it would make more sense to do so on the debt-ceiling debate rather than on the funding of the government.
As painful as the government shutdown may be to some, the Treasury Department’s ability to use special measures to manage the nation’s finances will run out Oct. 17, setting up a potential default on the $16.7 trillion debt that would wreak far more havoc on the global financial markets than the shuttering of federal agencies and national parks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/john-boehner-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-on-shutdown-and-debt-limit/2013/10/02/32a27f1a-2b9f-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html?wpisrc=nl_cuzheads
Boehner needs to control his hard right by reaching agreements with the Democratic Reps. Problem solved.
Americans Think GOP's Top Priority Is Troublemaking
100% correct view. Actions speak louder than words.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressional-connection/coverage/americans-think-gop-s-top-priority-is-troublemaking-20131001
Republicans wanted the shutdown all along, and Dems have already lost the negotiations
The Republicans, all of them, have wanted a standoff like this since the 2012 election; they just couldn’t agree on how to stage it.
You read that right. They looked like they were dithering and dathering, lurching hither and yon, because they couldn’t agree on what to hold as the hostage and how to stage the battle. Would the hostage be Obamacare? The Ryan budget? The sequester cuts? Deeper cuts than that? Reinstate the Bush tax cuts?
Well, they finally settled, by fits and starts, on Repeal Obamacare Now, and here we are.
The Williamsburg Accord in January 2013 set the Republican strategy for Obama’s second term
You’ve probably never heard of the so-called “Williamsburg Accord” agreement that came out of the Republican retreat in early 2013. I’ll let Jonathan Chait tell the story,
http://americablog.com/2013/10/republicans-wanted-shutdown-along-dems-already-lost-negotiations.html
House Now Has The Votes To End Government Shutdown, But Boehner Won't allow vote
Less than two days after the government shut down, 17 Republicans have come forward as of Wednesday afternoon to say they're ready to pass a bill to fund the government with no strings attached -- the magic number needed to pass a clean funding bill.
If all 200 Democrats stick together and team up with those Republicans, they have the votes for passage. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) would have to be willing to put that bill to a vote, but if he does, the votes appear to be there. The Senate would pass the bill in no time, sending it to be signed by President Barack Obama and ending the shutdown.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/clean-funding-bill_n_4031784.html
GOP members of Congress have completely safe districts, that is a problem
When you get the GOP members off the talking points you come to a simple conclusion: They don't face consequences for taking these hardline positions. When you hear members talk candidly about their biggest victory, it wasn’t winning the House in 2010. It was winning the state legislatures in 2010 because they were able to redraw their districts so they had many more conservative voters. The members get heat from the press but they don't get heat from back home.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/01/why-boehner-doesnt-just-ditch-the-right/
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