Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are in a battle. they are battling Harry Reid, Senate dems, Obama and the GOP establishment. The issue is that Ted Cruz and Mike Lee want to block Reid’s amendment to the CR that would remove the defunding of Obamacare. That means, an amendment that would allow funding of Obamacare.
McConnell won’t help and can’t understand why Cruz is filibustering. Either McConnell is astoundingly stupid and therefore unfit for the Senate, or he’s an active supporter of funding Obamacare. On second thought, McConnell is probably both.
The real issue is the Ted Cruz and Mike Lee won’t kowtow to McConnell’s magnificence and that of the rest of the GOP Senate leadership. Consequently, McConnell will try his best to torpedo Cruz’s attempts to keep the defunding Obamacare in the CR.
Erick Erickson, from RedState, posted a column about Cruz’s fight and McConnell sabotage. I’m not a Erickson fan, his writings are a bit too raw for me, but in this case, he’s nailed it.
By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | September 24th, 2013 at 04:30 AM |
A curious moment happened on Fox News Sunday. Chris Wallace told Karl Rove that a number of Republicans in Congress had sent him opposition research on Ted Cruz once Fox announced Cruz would be on.
Rove responded. He said this was all happening because Cruz and Mike Lee had not worked out strategy in the regular Senate Republican Conference lunches on Thursdays. Rove said that was what was supposed to happen. Except that for a year now, Senate Republicans have routinely leaked the proceedings of those meetings to the New York Times and Washington Post in ways designed to harm Cruz, Lee, and others who side with them.
In fact, as one Senator noted in last week’s meeting, this would not be happening but for John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell choosing not to lead. Had Lee and Cruz approached their Senate colleagues, they would have been dismissed. I can say this confidently because it has happened repeatedly and since their election to the Senate their Republican colleagues have routinely taken to “on background” leaks assailing them.
…
Let’s be clear here — absent the American people lending a loud, clear voice for Cruz and Lee, the Republicans will cave. They will not stand with Cruz and Lee unless dragged kicking and screaming against their will. I hope they will. I hope a collection of House conservatives will stand strong and force the issue. But the majority of them will betray Cruz and Lee. In fact, Senate Republican Leaders have built up so much irrational hatred of Cruz, they want him to fail just so they can say they beat him — damn the Obamacare implications. Their pride comes before the nation.
Cruz only needs a few dozen Republicans in the House to stand firm to be successful. He might get that. But the bulk of the GOP in the House will try to cut a deal with the Democrats and move on.
Like a light switch flipping on, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are casting light on the scurrying of Republican roaches in and out of the Capitol. Republican congressmen and Senators are now openly attacking Cruz and Lee. Outside groups like Americans for Tax Reform and outside media interests like the Wall Street Journal are amplifying attacks made by the establishment GOP against conservatives. Lobbyists are up in arms.
Mike Lee and Ted Cruz are showing the leadership skills others have claimed for themselves and conservatives now see just how badly they’ve been played by their so called leaders and many outside groups that have hung for too long on the conservative label while really being affiliates of the Republican Party itself. Because of Lee and Cruz, polling against Obamacare is up and the GOP’s favorability is up.
Even more importantly, the Republican base’s willingness to get back in the game has gone up too in the aftermath of a bitterly depressing 2012 election that saw a good bit of disengagement by the base. Conservatives may see their leaders now as the pathetic lot they are, but they have also seen real leadership in Cruz and Lee. They’ve also found real voices on the outside like Heritage Action for America and the Senate Conservatives Fund with which they can engage for education and motivation.
The column continues at the RedState website. I urge you to read it all.
John Cornyn, R-TX, sent out an e-mail proclaiming support for defunding Obamacare all the while supporting McConnell’s schemes against Cruz and Lee. I see our own Roy Blunt sent out a similar message. I don’t see him supporting Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, either.
Erick Erickson and RedState aren’t as big as some of the other internet media outlets, but others have taken noticed of McConnell’s spitefulness, too. Byron York, writing in the Washington Examiner, had this to say.
By BYRON YORK | SEPTEMBER 23, 2013 AT 6:31 PM
There are 44 Republicans in the Senate not named Ted Cruz or Mike Lee. By and large, they have been quiet during the various twists and turns in the effort to defund Obamacare. This week, they’ll speak.
Cruz and Lee took to the Sunday shows to advocate a complex plan under which Senate Republicans would filibuster the House-passed continuing resolution that also denies funds to Obamacare. Of course, that is the very bill Cruz and Lee asked the House to pass. But under the new scenario, filibustering the House bill would somehow pressure Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to grant concessions that would allow Republicans to successfully defund Obamacare. So Cruz and Lee advocate filibustering the bill to “preserve” it.
What York doesn’t say is that Cruz and Lee are filibustering Harry Reid’s amendment to the CR that would reinstate funding for Obamacare.
All that might take time, Cruz and Lee concede, and the clock is ticking toward a possible government shutdown. So in the interim, instead of closing the government, they want the House to pass a number of spending measures to keep agencies up and running.
It is a very far-fetched scenario. The question now is how many Republicans will go along with it.
In July, Lee circulated a letter asking his fellow GOP senators to pledge to “not support any continuing resolution or appropriations legislation that funds further implementation or enforcement of Obamacare.” Just a dozen — out of a total of 46 Republicans in the Senate — chose to sign. Since then, a couple more have come along.
But the bottom line is that about one-third of the Republican caucus has signed on to the plan. That’s a minority of the minority in the Senate.
Ask defunding advocates about the letter today, and they get a little irritated. “The letter is irrelevant,” says one GOP aide who supports the defunding strategy. “It is totally meaningless. It was simply a signal to our leadership of what we intended to do.”
Maybe so. And perhaps there are many more Republican senators who are on board with the plan. But there’s a strong possibility that lots of Republicans will choose not to go along with Cruz and Lee’s complicated bank-shot strategy. They are all opponents of Obamacare and all support defunding Obamacare, but they don’t want to be involved in a gambit they believe will result in failure and possibly a government shutdown. — The Washington Examiner.
The issue is that McConnell and Cornyn don’t want to be seen as the ones who “shutdown the government.” Some of us thing that’d be a good thing, shut it down and let Obama take the heat. No, they’d rather let Reid reinstate Obamacare funding and send the bill back to the House—where Boehner, in the conference committee, would rubber-stamp the change and Voila!, Obamacare is funded!
So, readers, be prepared to be sold out by the Washington GOP establishment, again. It’s getting to the point where voting for a democrat against McConnell and Boeher, would almost be worth the effort just to get rid of those traitors once and for all.
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