Non-tea partying Senate Republicans insisted upon cruising to debt limit and government shutdown-showdown defeat after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) dared prevent the raising of the white flag on their exclusive clubs floor for over 22 hours.
And no amount of postmortem-spin of the sequester status quo can deny McCains and McConnells their latest longed-for losses at President Obama’s hands.
George Will was right to describe the sequester spending cuts Democrats loathe most, as a hammer with which to bargain for other policy goals and it is true that the President would have forced a government shutdown and/or threatened default on that issue had the de-funding or delay of Obamacare not been pushed by conservatives. But for some Republicans to try and claim that merely maintaining the spending cuts achieved pursuant to the “Boehner Rule” in the 2012 debt ceiling negotiations somehow salvaged constitutes a victory for the GOP over Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrats are deluding themselves.
After tea partiers for repeal of Obamacare and cuts in government spending fueled the Republican 2010 mid-term election landslide that made him Speaker of the House, John Boehner announced that any raising of the debt ceiling must be matched dollar-for-dollar with spending cuts. The sequester was the price for the first such raisings negotiated in 2011-12.
Republicans that hadn’t even the guts to apply the Boehner Rule to achieve additional budget cuts for this year’s raising of the amount the federal government can borrow, much less the courage to demand equal protection of Americans under Obamacare, can’t count additional coup against Big Government for merely holding on to the same scalp.
The only non-Democrat winners emerging from the un-grand bargain that Dirty Harry Reid (D-NV) and Mitch McConnell insisted sufficient Republicans dare not refuse, are those that refused to betray Senators Cruz, Mike Lee (R-UT) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Americans suffering from Obamacare.
Mike DeVine‘s Right.com
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
