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On Government Shutdowns, Let’s Take Our Own Side
The president of the United States is not going to [defund Planned Parenthood, and all we’re going do is shut the government down … The American people are gonna shake their heads and say, “What’s the story with these Republicans?” … There are ways to do it without having to shut the government down, but I’m sympathetic to the fact that we don’t want this organization to get funding, and the money ought to be reprogrammed for family planning in other organizations that don’t support this tactic. But I would not be for shutting the government down …because I don’t think it’s going to work out.
That’s what John Kasich said during last week’s Republican debate and Karl Rove said something similar this morning in The Wall Street Journal. Honest people can disagree on whether a “shutdown” strategy is a good idea or not, but we need to be truthful and accurate about how this works: Republicans can’t shut down the government; Congress can’t shut down the government; Only the president can shut down the government.
Can’t a conservative politician bring himself to say “We don’t want to shut down the government. In fact, we can’t do that. It’s the president that is threatening to shut down the government. We call on President Obama to keep the government open.”
It isn’t like the two sides are playing chicken. Only one side can commit the childish act of shutting down the government. Only one side is the guilty party.
Even worse, Sen. Ted Cruz was on the same stage when Kasich made the above statement and even Cruz couldn’t bring himself to correct the record. Talk about a conservative communication problem.
Whether or not Congress defunds Planned Parenthood in the face of Obama’s threats, the press will be talking about a possible shutdown and, yes, the press is against us. That’s all the more reason we should tell the plain truth. Honest people can debate the strategy, but we can’t have a proper debate if we can’t describe the situation properly.
We need to take our own side in this argument.
Published in Politics
Good points as usual, but what does not funding PP have to do with those things?
We have to coalesce the republican base first before we can worry about the general and to date we are fracturing it further by handing victory to the democrats.
I don’t agree with the premise. Expecting victory on something like this when we don’t have the presidency is like expecting your team to score runs when the other team is at bat.
I fail to see the wisdom in refusing to make our case, just because the press is against us.
I think the PP videos have a significant chance to be the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” of abortion. At least the most significant opinion-changer since “The Silent Scream” video. The biggest problem is that most people haven’t seen them.
I’m torn about whether to support a shutdown or not. On the one hand, if Republicans can’t even remove funding for selling baby parts for profit, there’s no point voting for any of them. On the other hand, the R’s would almost certainly lose the media battle, cave, and then blame each other. Their general incompetence is fairly reliable.
I’d be ecstatic if the shutdown happened and every R was on news daily saying “Have you seen the videos? PP sells baby parts for profit. No, they haven’t been discredited. Why haven’t you watched the videos? What are you scared of?” Short of that, I’d be happy if at the next debate, several Republican candidates talked about the need to show friends, family, co-workers videos. Our best chance to win on this issue is to throw all our effort at getting around the media blackout.
My one consolation is the Dem’s in ’07-09. ’07, they were elected to shut down Iraq, and had to cave to W. on the surge. Their side still showed up big in ’08, and ’09 they got what they wanted.
I have to disagree. Consider the Iran deal. It would have been considered a Republican moral victory to present to the president a bill of disapproval and force him to veto it. Instead, it was filibustered.
Conservatives and pro-life independents want the Republicans to show courage on this issue. The consistent failure to do so, on this and other issues, is partly responsible for the rise of Trump.
Make your case, just don’t charge uphill on the entrenched position.
I have seen no good argument that the democrats killing it in the senate is in any practical sense different from a democrat president killing it shortly after.
The presidency always garners more attention. Similar to how we focus on quarterbacks and not football teams.
That’s exactly the point of the post – Make the case! Why refuse to make the case? The focus of the post is very narrow. It’s about making our case should a shutdown happen.
Perhaps you’d like to retroactively take issue with the Army Rangers who took Pointe Du Hoc, but I’d advise against it. To quote President Reagan, “The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers — the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb.” There was a time when Americans stopped a holocaust by putting their very lives on the line. And now we hear that putting political capital on the line in order to stop a holocaust in which our children are being murdered, chopped up, and their body parts are being sold, is too daunting a challenge? I’d like to think that the heroes at Normandy, and subsequent generations of veterans who know what real risk is, didn’t put everything on the line for naught,…but there are moments that make me wonder.
The argument is that the president is going against the majority view of both houses of congress to do something that is also extremely unpopular in the country. This is more politically costly to him than the non-story that the bill failed to survive in the senate.
What exactly are the numbers on funding for PP? Is it “extremely unpopular” with the public at large or just conservatives?
This. At the very least, have the President ‘articulate’ his case for funding Planned Parenthood.
He has. He says he is for funding “Women’s Healthcare”. And the media lets him get away with it.
As I have been saying all thread – he has a much easier narrative to tell.
It polls fairly well, and even where it doesn’t,such as New Jersey, Christie won reelection despite doing it. But when it gets attached to a shut down it becomes a loser, as would just about any issue.
We defund Planned Parenthood by having a president who will sign it into law. We need the fortitude to save our powder for when the fight is actually winnable.
Losing now, just so we feel better about ourselves in short run just leaves us losers over the long run. Choosing to die on the hill today when you can win on the hill tomorrow is not brave, or noble.
The problem in answering that question is the deliberate confusion between funding abortion and funding “women’s health.” The latter is very popular. The former is not only unpopular, it is illegal.
You are correct and he will always have a much easier narrative.
If our sole motivation in not forcing a position to a Presidential veto is because democrats have an easier path in the media then we will never push for anything.
There is no legislation, circumstance, position or battle we will ever win in the media.
When is tomorrow? I thought tomorrow was a majority in the Senate?
As an ex military man I’d think you would understand tactics. Do you really think its possible to win on this issue now? If so how?
Sometimes “just fight” is not the appropriate response, sometimes “live to fight another day” might actually get the job done.
I thought our sole motivation was to actually get conservative legislation enacted into law.
I guess I don’t see the value in losing.
Don’t equate winning in the media with accomplishment.
Make Obama defend is positions.
Dave, you always provide perfect clarity. A war is never won by sitting on your thumbs waiting for the perfect Zodiac alignment of planets. War by horoscopes falls in the sphere of the San Francisco theory of how to avoid war and hope it some how all works out ..
I do understand tactics.
The disagreement is how strong our position. If we assess the strength of our position on likelihood of media support we have already talked ourselves into losing.
All I’ve heard is that we will suffer electoral wrath without quantitative evidence or that we will not win a victory in the future that is exclusively speculation.
Frank Soto is too smart for me to completely dismiss. Perhaps everything he says is true and will come to pass. If so sometimes there is value in clarity.
I thought, perhaps foolishly, that after a 2nd Obama term things would be bad enough that we would reject progressives both D and R outright, but thanks mostly to the Federal Reserve that hasn’t occurred.
We have a God given republic if we choose to keep it. If we are already in such a minority thanks largely to our own doing then perhaps we need to realize that.
Let’s say Obama draws a real red line over PP, lets the government shut down, and as a result Hillary is our first woman president and the house and senate go D in 2016. That tells us America is dead and we change our priorities and tactics.
None of this is going to be easy or comfortable.
To what end?
It it just tells us that we played our hand at the wrong time.
When is the correct time?
His credibility.
There is no tomorrow. 8 republicans voted with the democrats against the bill that funded the government and defunded planned parenthood. We do not need just a president, and 60 senators, we need the right 60 Republican Senators. Is it time to just accept that selling baby parts is acceptable in America?
I think Frank already outlined that.