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Fiorina: Shut Down Government Over Planned Parenthood
Yesterday, Hugh Hewitt asked Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina whether she thought the government should be shut down over defunding Planned Parenthood. She answered “Yes.”
This would send the GOP consultant class into fits of rage if it came from the likes of Senator Ted Cruz, but Fiorina is not Cruz. So where do people stand on this fight? Is this a hill (finally) worth dying on? Will cutting Planned Parenthood put Democrats in a difficult position to defend, or is Fiorina being brash and threatening to damage the Republican brand with voters?
I don’t think the question is whether this is a hill worth dying on. I think the question is whether shutting down the government will, in fact, do anything.
I wonder whether McConnell, under pressure, pushed before the time was ripe: there are still videos to come and time for it to sink deeper into the public consciousness. For this to make a difference, it’s going to have to make a difference with the public — the kind of difference that will — to be blunt — outweigh campaign donations for certain senators.
I’m hardly an expert on parliamentary procedure, but surely the way to do this is to insert it in a bill the President needs to sign, rather than a stand-alone. If it comes in that form from the House, would McConnell need to allow a vote to strip that provision from it? Or would he just need the votes to pass the complete measure?
Carly is the man .. at least she’s my man .. actually she’s one of my mans (men?), Ted already earned his man card.
What would defunding Planned Parenthood look like? Do they receive direct funding, or is it some sort of fee-for-service thing, like through Medicaid?
I’m 100% pro-life, but I can’t see shutting the government down as a positive step. I’m typically against the shut downs. I don’t recall them ever leading to a satisfying conclusion.
Wow, the more I hear from Carly, the more I like her.
“Hammer the Democrats.”
“Make them defend their (indefensible) position.”
Spot on.
That was the argument some of us made with the highway bill. Instead we got a show vote on ExIm that was a poison pill for the House.
Leigh has it right – the question is will shutting down the government be productive. Last time this was tried it just allowed the Democrats to demagogue the shutdown and avoid the issues entirely.
Side note, I was more impressed with Hugh requiring an answer to the yes/no question. Things like that are why no one on the right is upset about him asking questions in the debates.
Surely someone in the money-sucking Vast Bureaucracy knows. Right?!
If abortion is such an important service to provide to the poor, I’m sure morally superior progressives would support PP with their charity dollars. Why does abortion have to be one of those things “we do together?”
I’m quite willing to slam them for not putting it in the highway bill.
That said, I don’t have an answer to my question about parliamentary procedure. Is there a way to have the House send the bill to the Senate and have it get past the Senate without 60 votes on the amendment itself?
The highway bill is coming up again, since they just passed a short-term extension. We have another go at it on this one. (And the Democrats have another go at Ex-Im.)
So electoral/political prospects are more important than human life?
If shutting down the government doesn’t actually defund planned parenthood, and in fact allows the Democrats to change the narrative from “Planned Parenthood is doing some pretty evil stuff” to “Republicans want to take away your social security checks and welfare payments” then what exactly have you done for human life?
The Senate gets to do that once a year, it has to be a budget issue, and they have decided to use it this time to defund Ocare.
Why wouldn’t it defund PP? Well, other than the spineless jackwagons we elect who can’t hold the line when the enemy attacks.
KP — the stakes are very, very high, and that only means the strategy should be chosen all the more carefully.
“Shutting down the government” is a political strategy. It is a weapon that has the opportunity to be successful only if the other guy is willing to blink. And the other guy won’t blink, both because he’s stubborn and because he has good reason to think he can win politically. We all know this.
When you’re in a life-and-death struggle, you choose your weapons and your strategy wisely.
Pro-lifers won’t win by focusing their fire on the Republicans. They’ll win by winning in the public square — by changing the political calculus for members of both parties. We needed five more Democrats to win outright. If the politics on the ground were different in a few states, we would have those five.
Ummm, for all the reasons I said? It shifts the focus from PP to Republican Shutdown and allows the Demcrats to demagogue the issue and win the public over.
The reason the shutdown never works is because the Republicans always cave.
The Democrats would vote against any bill that included defunding Obamacare, because that priority would top everything.
Here’s what I’m wondering: The House passes a highway bill, and slips in a provision defunding PP. Does McConnell have to let the Senate vote on that provision separately, or do they vote up or down on the whole bill?
Maybe enough Democrats would vote against the whole thing to bring it down rather than defund PP. If so at least it would put them on the spot, in the same situation Obama would be if it came to his desk. Maybe a few of them would rather the issue go away.
It’s worth noting that abortion isn’t even that expensive.
This is because a public that was sympathetic to them turn against them during a shutdown. Convince the public this is worth shutting down the government over and republicans won’t cave.
We should care about the people and about good government. Caring about the Republican brand is so cynical and self-centered. We’ll lose more voters with our narcissistic concern over the “Republican brand” than by anything else.
It would come down to if he allowed amendments that would strip the provision out. Of course, such a thing could easily be voted down once cloture was achieved. My fear is that given that possibility we might see R’s vote to remove the defunding just so they could get something passed. I really don’t know if we have the number needed to defund PP even in a low risk scenario.
By taking the route McConnell has the choice has been forced to either shut down or fund PP, and we know congressional R’s don’t have the stones to shut it down, so I question his commitment to defunding.
This was an empty show vote, but he was under pressure from conservatives to allow a vote soon. We’ll find out.
He got a show vote on ExIm and on PP. He has placated both socons and the Chamber of Commerce conservatives. By my calculations he should be drunk with power until sometime near Thanksgiving.
Normally, I’d be very hesitant to support a government shutdown, since it tends to backfire on Republicans. However, in this case, I feel like forcing the average person to think about where the taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood are going would be very bad for Democrats. Especially since we have these videos, which constitute new evidence of just how terrible this organization is and justifies immediate and strong action. The only problem is actually winning, while possible, would take politicians with more fortitude than we probably have.
So what strategy can we use, given the politicians that we have?
(Beyond “elect better ones,” which is a distant hope. Politicians will always be politicians, and the next Senate is not likely to be better than this one.)
Because the democrats are more than happy to let the government shutdown so they can run on something other then their abysmal record. They aren’t going to cave when the shutdown will consistently be helping them in the polls.
That would be true on any issue, but on abortion, sacrament of the left, they would fight to the death regardless of the electoral politics.
Shutting down the government has no chance of defunding planned parenthood.
Hope for the best? But really, the most effective strategy is probably the more long-term one that others have stated here: going directly for the hearts and minds of the average person so as to make the proposition of defunding PP less risky to the spineless politicians. My point above was that I think a shutdown fight could actually be useful towards that end, but I don’t know what kind of negative repercussions it might also have for the GOP.
The greatest danger of shutting down PP is that it will give politicians and voters experience in shutting down abusive government. It will lead to places where they don’t want to go. That is an existential threat to the establishment, and nobody wants that.
Republicans can show they don’t really mean anything they say by letting the Democrats have their way on things they want. That will help them in the polls.