Tea Party Rejects... Blah, Blah, Blah-- Does That Mean The Koch Brothers Have Said No?

Boehner and Cantor and the rest of the sorry GOP congressional conservative mainstream are holding a tiger by the tail-- and the tiger is hungry. They've talked so much about repealing ObamaCare that the drooling imbeciles they helped elect as Republicans last year think its real. So the House leadership tried throwing them a bone... and they threw it back. Boehner and Cantor have to pass a government funding bill this week. DeMint's neo-fascist crew at Heritage-- plus the fractious boobs at Club for Growth and FreedomWorks-- have been rallying the extremists and threatening to primary any Republicans who don't vote to bankrupt the government over ObamaCare. The congressional lunatic fringe, led by crackpots like Louie Gohmert-- who apparently decided not to become a citizen of Egypt after all-- held an anti-ObamaCareCantor rally yesterday, lying his ass off and blasting the House leadership for trying to trick them with anything less than the unattainable end to ObamaCare/Medicare/Social Security/minimum wage... whatever. Oh... and impeaching Obama, of course.

Hundreds of simpleminded nihilists-- the Republican base-- booed and jeered Boehner's, Cantor's and Miss McConnell's refusal to just shut down the government. One of the cheerleaders for anarchy was one of the Koch brothers congressmen, Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) who the Kochs are pushing to replace Boehner as Speaker. A dangerous anti-government Bircher type, Huelskamp took the stage and told the assembled lunatics that Cantor is using "procedural tricks" to fool them and that "every Republican says they want to stop ObamaCare, but later, on Thursday, they will attempt to fund ObamaCare and convince you that's not the case." He was backed up by the odious Ted Cruz, who the Kochs want to run for president in 2016. Benjy Sarlin:

Several hundred Tea Party activists gathered outside the Capitol to declare war against Obamacare on Tuesday, even if it meant shutting down the government. But the battle may be over before it even begins.

Shortly before the “Exempt America” rally, which was sponsored by a variety of conservative groups, news broke that House Republican leaders were working on legislation to avert a shutdown. Under the new proposal, the Senate would have to vote on defunding the health care law, but the House would still fund the government in the short term even if-- as expected-- the Senate ultimately kept the law intact. The reported decision came after weeks of dire warnings from moderate Republicans, especially in the Senate, that forcing a shutdown over the Affordable Care Act would backfire politically an achieving its goals.

Several of the speakers at Tuesday’s rally, which included Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee, among other Republican rising stars, condemned the emerging deal in their remarks. Conservative groups leading the effort to defund the bill issued statements slamming it as well.

...The House has voted 40 times already on repealing the Affordable Care Act, but the most recent fight is considered a higher stakes fight because of its timing. On Oct. 1, the law’s health care exchanges will begin their first open enrollment period, allowing individuals to buy subsidized insurance even if they have a pre-existing medical condition. As a result, future efforts to damage the law may be a harder sell as they would entail cutting off coverage for the millions of Americans projected to use the exchanges in the first year alone.

“What we’re seeing now in Washington, I would describe as the frantic last gasps of the extremists as they see yet another good piece of the Affordable Care Act roll out-- and probably the biggest one to roll out so far,” Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said at a morning press conference prebutting the Tea Party rally.

Despite the news that House Republican leaders may temporarily back away from a shutdown fight, there still will be more opportunities for conflict over the health care law in the coming months. According to National Review, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor plans to demand a one-year delay to the Affordable Care Act’s implementation in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Obama officials have said they will flatly refuse to negotiate over the debt limit, setting up another potential standoff.

This morning Jake Sherman and Ginger Gibson reported at Politico that the crazies in the House GOP caucus are now turning against mainstream conservatives in the Senate, threatening and raging at them in their importence and frustration. All it would take is 17 extremists to derail Boehner's and Cantor's plans to keep the government open. The Georgia House delegation seems to be recruiting among the far right lunatic fringe for just such an outcome.

[I]n quiet conversations among senior Republican aides, other motivations are becoming clear, as well. They say passing the defunding resolution along with the CR and sending it to the Senate is a dare, of sorts, to Senate Republicans.

If figures like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) call the plan chicanery, and other conservatives say the House is weak, GOP leadership wants to see him and others stand up and filibuster the CR. In short, the House is sick of getting blamed for being weak on Obamacare.

Asked whether they are trying to put pressure on Senate Republicans to filibuster, Rogers said, “You can say that.”

A senior GOP aide said, “They should be preparing for a two [to] three week filibuster, to prevent the Senate from adjourning.” The aide added that there are enough Senate Republicans to prevent a funding bill from reaching President Barack Obama’s desk.

“By any objective measure, that is 100 percent their failure to defund Obamacare because they can’t even achieve unity amongst Senate Republicans,” the aide said. “If they could tell us that they could do that, we would be in an entirely different strategic situation, but they have failed to even try, and now their plan is to blame everyone but themselves.”

It’s with these intraparty feuds, divergence of opinions and uncertainties on strategy that Congress is kicking off a frantic three-month stretch, during which it will deal with several high-stakes fiscal battles that will shape the contours of another year of Barack Obama’s presidency, and the 2014 midterm elections.

James Downie, at the Washington Post finds this very public challenge is remarkable for two reasons: "First, it suggests that senior House Republicans don’t expect to stop Obamacare and are looking for others to share the blame. Second, rather than take on organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth or right-wing pundits such as Rush Limbaugh for whipping up unrealistic expectations about the prospects of stopping Obamacare, the House GOP is publicly antagonizing the very people who it ultimately needs to work with to have any hope of blocking Obamacare." He concludes with the only conclusion available, namely that "Capitol Hill Republicans will remain in disarray right up until the end of the government-funding and debt-limit negotiations."