That is the question asked at Townhall on yet again, Senate Majority Mitch McConnell puts morality behind a government shut down in priorities of DC. Or to put it another way – is this yet another battle that the Republican elite, that much of the base cares deeply about, will runaway from?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell strongly implied yesterday that he wouldn’t push to defund Planned Parenthood in the September appropriations negotiations. McConnell seemed to express fears that such a fight could backfire on public perception of Republicans, particularly if it led to the threat of a government shutdown:
“We’ve been down this path before,” McConnell said. “This is a tactic that has been tried going back to the ’90s and it always has the same ending — that the focus is on the government shutdown and not on the underlying issue that is being protested. We are not doing government shutdowns and we are not threatening to default on the national debt.”
Yes, we have been down this road before. What was the effective result of the very partial government shutdown? Well, blowhards in punitryland (Leftists and squishy Republicans all in the tank for #AllGovtMatters) lost their collective minds even as their tongues and keyboards kept moving, Establishment Republians wailed while their Socialist / Democrat smiled broadly…
…and then it was their turn to wail when the Republican base rewarded the fight by giving a majority to the Repubs in the US House and killed off the auto veto lock the Dems had in the US Senate. This was a bad thing? I don’t think so. And then the base went further the following cycle and took away the Dems majority in the Senate. Gosh, it seems that if the Republicans, who only seem to concentrate on the W come elections (versus on what is campaigned on and what that power is supposed to be used for), can’t even figure out what gives them the W’s in the first place. And yet, we call these the Smart People of the Party.
The Majority Leader said, however, that the investigations into Planned Parenthood, led in the Senate by Chuck Grassley (R-IA), will press forward as planned. “We intend to continue to pursue the facts, and we’ll look for other opportunities to make our voices heard on Planned Parenthood.”
In other words, just like the faux show vote last week in the Senate on the standalone vote, we can translate this to be translated as “Consider this a dead issue”. So, what DO they fight for, other than for themselves?
NH GOP Committeeman Steve Duprey and former NH Speaker of the House Doug Scamman (R, but Speaker by dint of enlisting Dems to go around the R majority) are smiling broadly.
