Continuing on in shutdown mode, Sen. Ted Cruz is going to push the defunding of Planned Parenthood so hard that we’ll think he’s Salt-N-Pepa. He’s riling up the worst of the House Republicans, just as he did in 2013.
If you need some talking points for your deranged uncle to rebut Cruz’s nonsense, you can get them from actual Republicans:
Moderate House Republicans are pushing back against the conservative Texas senator, fearing a reprise of 2013.
Eleven House freshmen, including members of the centrist Main Street Partnership, wrote a letter to colleagues Tuesday warning them to “avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.”
“The sixteen-day government shutdown in 2013 cost our economy an estimated $24 billion and stalled the creation of over 100,000 private sector jobs,” they wrote.
Yet, as I’ve discussed quite often recently, we’ve passed the point of return with the Republican base and Cruz and his fellow travelers are unfortunately, actually correct about the following:
Cruz’s allies, however, argue that GOP leaders need to pay more attention to the party’s sinking popularity among its own base — which could be revived with a high-stakes battle over Planned Parenthood funding.
Survey data released by the Pew Research Center over the summer showed that positive views of the GOP among Republicans declined by an astonishing 18 percentage points since January.
Overall, the party’s favorability rating dropped by 9 points since it took over the Senate in January, according to the Pew poll, published in July.
Generally speaking, I think Republican efforts to boost enthusiasm among their base at the expense of attracting the middle are a fool’s game played by Movement Conservatives who don’t give a damn about real strategy or evidence. But you can’t have your base is open revolt, and that’s what they have now.
“If you juxtapose these numbers with the period before and after the 2013 shutdown, our numbers are now much worse,” said a Senate Republican aide. “The only thing we can see now is people are not happy with what we’re doing. Whatever we’re doing is not working. For all intents and purposes, we’re on a sinking ship.”
I don’t see any way out of the predicament they’ve created for themselves by years of peddling the most nonsensical bullshit and making the most unobtainable of promises. They’re damned if they pander to their base now and they’re damned if they don’t.
But, as a rule, when you’re in a hole…
You’re gonna need a bigger shovel.
This is where nihilism starts to eat its own tail. I look at a phrase like “whatever we’re doing,” coming from a Republican, and I think, “Whatever you’re doing? What are you talking about?” The whole point of Republican governance is to not do things, but eventually you get to a point where you can’t do less than nothing.
Best not to think about it too much. That way lies madness.
Well, modern Republican governing philosophy does seek to actively take away rights and money from poor and middle-class Americans and provide more rights and money for rich people. They do seek to do those things, we must admit.
Does any body know if this is true
The number of programs that depend on government money are many. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is just one of them. SNAP provides food stamps and benefits to 45 million Americans. It helps ensure that as few children as possible go to bed hungry at night. If Congress does not pass the new government funding law, SNAP may have to stop all benefits within the first few days of October.
Simply put, the USDA does not have the funding to run the food benefits program on its own. It relies on government funding to feed families in America that rely on these benefits for all or some of their food
No reason why it shouldn’t be true. The USDA is not simply reliant on government funding, it’s the government–a cabinet department. Apparently it’s normal for them to have cash reserves to cover a months’ worth of benefits in case of some emergency, and that’s why they weren’t affected in the 2013 shutdown, but this time they say they don’t have the money.
. . . as a rule, when you’re in a hole . . .
Oh, but just one more fix!
Very hard to see what the conservative movement and its Noise Machine has gained by advancing this trumped-up Planned Parenthood sting into a cause celebre worse than Hitlerian euthanasia, inducing spittle-flecked apoplexy in pro-lifers across the nation. Of course the nation can’t fund the for-profit trade in babies brains, which is how even the Repub prez clowns are describing the “facts”—with the usual weak hand-wringing pushback from the useless corporate media. Don’t the polls across rural red America support the ransacking of PP as a result of this manufactured outrage?
So now supposedly sane leaders like Mitch and the Drunk are over a barrel, with extremists braying for action and the base expecting the babies brains to be saved and the demon defunded at the very least. Pity the “leaders” and coaches didn’t think of this as the Noise Machine spread the hysterical lies and the prattling Repub clowns on stage turned up the volume. One wonders if the “conservative” right hand really knows what the left is doing The pro-life movement whips the rubes into a frenzy and no one maps out the end game in DC?
Or is the reality that gub’mint shutdowns simply do not politically harm Repubs in any way, except that the story has to be that the Repub “leaders” were somehow forced into them by “extremists”? Then all the “moderate” Repubs in, say, Wisconsin can keep voting for turds like Paul Ryan?
At a bare minimum the goal was to Acornize Planned Parenthood, since the Right has been seeking to “controversialize” it for some time. I guess the difference is that no one was willing to protect Acorn but PP has defenders, even if few Dems are really doing too much to publicize the skein of lies that the latest scam utilizes.
The GOP will shutdown the Government, why you may ask for they have nothing else they can do to try to appear relevant.Even though they appear to be shooting themselves in the foot.
It occurs to me that there hasn’t been any sharp, hard thinking on the right for a long time about who “the base” really is – or perhaps better how it should be thought of.
Is it the most ideologically hardened people in the party?
Is it the ones most reliable to vote Republican?
Is it the ones most reliable to contribute money?
Is it the ones most reliable to contribute the most money?
Is it the ones most reliable to make the most noise if they aren’t happy?
Or is it the ones with the votes most necessary to build off of a winning party?
If the purpose of a political party is to actually win elections then it seems obvious it needs to be the last choice. If you are the party that can actually win elections then the money and people of extreme positions will run to you, not the other way around.
To do anything else means that when a few nut jobs with a hidden camera and a video editing machine post a fake video to the web (for example), you will be forced to respond, even to the point of shutting the government down and losing the next election.
This seems as much a matter of total political incompetence and substance-less leadership more than Ideology run amuck. But I guess we knew that.
However, there is a message in there for Democrrats too. I their case though I don’t think building a winning party means moving to the center. Far-left positions are actually very popular with most Americans so long as they are not labeled far-left.
The problem is that the republican wurlitzer trumpets almost all dem. positions as far left, and many voters are happy to believe it. Hell, even fluoridation can be sold as a communist conspiracy. The cognitive dissonance out there amongst the voters makes my eye teeth hurt.
They didn’t pay a price the last time they did this so I’m guessing the thinking* is, “why the hell not?”
* using the term loosely