I wrote last Friday that the battlelines in Washington between the libs, conservatives and the GOP establishment have been drawn. Never have those divisions been more apparent that in the battle to defund Obamacare.
The liberals in congress claim that defunding Obamacare is a hoax.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) blows the whistle on the hoax to defund Obamacare. “The CRS report notes that much of the administration’s implementation funding comes from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) itself — not from the spending bills some conservatives are threatening to defeat. . . . Coburn is among the Senate Republicans who have pushed back strongly against efforts to shut down the government unless a bill to keep it open defunds ObamaCare. ‘I’ve been here when we’ve done that, and it’s not a strategy that works,’ Coburn told The Washington Post. ‘This is misleading the conservative base because it’s not achievable, and all it will do in the long run is dispirit the base. This is a failed strategy for conservatives.’” — Washington Post.
Oh, wait! Tom Coburn is a ‘Pub!
This is a prime example of the divisions in Washington. The libs want to fund Obamacare, the establishment GOP, as represented by Tom Coburn, don’t want to defund Obamacare because it’s too much effort, and the few conservatives in Congress, do.
I heard someone say on the radio that the main problem in Washington isn’t opposing the libs. The problem is that the GOP establishment makes no effort to oppose the libs—only the conservatives like Cruz and a few others actively working against the libs and their socialist agenda. If the GOP, the party, stands by and allows the dems and libs to pass piece after piece of liberal legislation, what good are they?
It appears that only the Tea Party and associated grass-roots organizations are the only ones still fighting in Washington to oppose socialism and the lib’s plan for one-party rule.
By Tom Howell Jr. – The Washington Times, Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Tea party Republicans are girding for a fight with the White House — and members of their own party — over how to block President Obama’s health care law, saying Congress must not miss the chance to use this year’s funding bills to try to starve Obamacare to death.
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative nonprofit in Washington, freshman Sen. Ted Cruz called on “hundreds of thousands” or even millions of grass-roots critics of the Affordable Care Act to sign petitions and call their representatives on Capitol Hill before the spending debate in September.
Mr. Cruz, Texas Republican, and several party allies in the Senate — including organizer Mike Lee of Utah, and rising stars Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky — are stoking talk of a government shutdown by vowing to reject any spending plan in September that funds “even one penny of Obamacare.”
“I believe we can win this fight,” Mr. Cruz said.
But their push is running into problems. Even some Republicans who want to end the health care law say holding the rest of government funding hostage is neither politically smart nor doable.
…
Republican leaders in both chambers are still grappling with a strategy. They are caught between a president insistent that his chief domestic priority be protected, and their own troops on the right who say this year’s funding bill offers leverage that they cannot afford to pass up.
Mr. Cruz said the House should pass a bill that funds every facet of the federal government except for the health care law. Then, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, and Mr. Obama will cry foul, he predicted.
“At that point, we’ve got to actually stand up and fight,” Mr. Cruz told bloggers at Heritage, calling on grass-roots conservatives to light up the phones on Capitol Hill. “If we don’t do it now, we very likely never will.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said there have been “a lot of internal discussions” about how to handle the situation, but that no decisions have been made.
In the end, the establishment waffles, runs in circles, while the young turks, the conservatives, actually present a plan to do something.
No, we don’t know if the conservative plan will work. It has to get through the Senate. Chances are, Reid will kill it and then—the government shuts down because their will be no funding legislation to continue federal operations…except for essential services such as the military, Social Security, and a few others.
Note: If those essential services stop, it’s not because of a shutdown. No, it is because Obama and the dems WANT them shut down.
If the GOP establishment can’t or won’t oppose Obamacare, the dems and the liberal elements in Washington, we need to either give them incentives to be active in the opposition or be removed, i.e., primaried out of office.
In either case, if the GOP is to continue to exist as a viable party, the local and state central committees must act. The state central committees are most important for this effort because they make up most of the national GOP central committee.
Those central committees must make a definitive move, not just an effort, a commitment, to force the establishment to get in line or to get out. Not one of those in the Washington establishment can exist without the support of the national and state central committees. Those committees are the true force in the party.
It is time for those committees to act. A first step would be to have each Congressman, Senator and Representative, pledge to defund Obamacare, to kill the Democrat Voter Recruitment bill, AKA Immigration Reform, in the house, to actively oppose Obama and the dem and make that pledge in WRITING! They must commit to that pledge or run the risk of being removed from office via primary opponents.
The Central Committees can no longer sit on the sidelines, kowtowing to the state and national committees. They must act. Now.
