The Political Victims Of The GOP "Let's Roll" Mentality Towards Shutting Down The Government: Swing District Republicans

On Saturday, John Culberson (R-TX), marched out of the GOP House caucus meeting that had resolved to shut down the government, shouting "Let's Roll," a true suicide-bombing terrorist. Except his neatly gerrymandered R+13 district (which Romney won 60-39%) won't extract any penalty from its harebrained congressman. [harebrained: ill-judged, rash, foolish, foolhardy, reckless, madcap, wild, silly, stupid, ridiculous, absurd, idiotic, asinine, imprudent, impracticable, unworkable, unrealistic, unconsidered, half-baked, ill-thought-out, ill-advised, ill-conceived... that covers it well enough, although perhaps I should remind you that Culberson is an official member of Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus.] Many of the teabaggers are giving credit for their decision to shut down the government to Ted Cruz. Outside right-wing groups, like the American Conservative Union, with their own uniformly anti-family agendas, have encouraged the GOP to shut down the government. Al Cardenas, head of the ACU, is telling Republicans there will be no serious economic harm done by a government shutdown or failure to raise the debt ceiling-- despite a consensus among economists to the contrary.

Staten Island congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm, already under federal investigation on a number of corruption charges, emerged from the same meeting and admitted to CNN that the GOP had decided to shut down the government, awkward messaging when Boehner and Cantor will spend the next few days halfheartedly trying to blame the government shutdown on the Senate and President Obama. Grimm is in a very different situation, politically, then Culbertson and the other Tea Party Republicans. Obama beat Romney in his district, 52-47% and the only thing that could save his ass this year is incompetent recruiting by Steve Israel. There are at least 32 Republicans who, unlike Culbertson, can't win reelection without independent voters. And, unlike Republicans, independent voters do not back this government shut down. Here's the least of the Republican incumbents who will most likely be walking the plank for the greater glory of Ted Cruz's presidential nomination:

• Paul Ryan (WI)
• Buck McKeon (CA)
• Tom Reed (NY)
• Tim Walberg (MI)
• Frank Wolf (VA)
• Michael Grimm (NY)
• Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA)
• Mike Rogers (MI)
• Charlie Dent (PA)
• John Kline (MN)
• Scott Rigell (VA)
• Pat Meehan (PA)
• Erk Paulsen (MN)
• Jim Gerlach (PA)
• Sean Duffy (WI)
• Reid Ribble (WI)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL)
• Bill Young (FL)
• Dave Reichert (WA)
• Jeff Denham (CA)
• Fred Upton (MI)
• Michael Fitzpatrick (PA)
• Peter King (NY)
• Jon Runyan (NJ)
• Joe Heck (NV)
• Tom Latham (IA)
• Rodney Davis (IL)
• Mike Coffman (CO)
• Chris Gibson (NY)
• Frank LoBiondo (NJ)
• David Valadao (CA)
• Gary Miller (CA)

Notice Charlie Dent is on that list above. Obama won his district 52-47% in 2008 and lost it 51-48% last year. Dent isn't ready to commit political suicide on behalf of Ted Cruz's political aspirations quite yet. "Let's see what the Senate sends back," he told HuffPo. "If they send back another clean CR, I suspect-- again, I'm not making a decision on what's going to be on the floor-- a clean CR would likely to be on the floor at some point. I'm prepared to vote for a clean CR," he said. "I don't want the government to shut down."

Earlier in the week, when all but one House Republican voted to shut down the government, Charlie Dent was not that Republican. Last night, Drnt voted for a government shut down again. Only two Republicans crossed he aisle and voted no, New Yorkers, Chris Gibson and Richard Hanna. They passed two reactionary Democrats crossing in the other direction, Blue Dogs Mike McIntyre (NC) and Jim Matheson (UT). Last word goes to Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs, Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ):

"We are extremely disappointed that the Republican Party put the ideological demands of a few ahead of the needs of millions of working families. It's not enough for them to deny tens of millions of Americans health care; they are also deliberately preventing housing loans to low and middle income families in rural communities, halting important government research into life-threatening diseases, furloughing thousands of working Americans and stopping $1 billion in assistance to small businesses. The American people need a Congress that works for them, not against them. The Republican majority proved with their action today that working families are not their priority.”

UPDATE: Final Word On Dent

As we saw, he huffed and puffed about not wanting to shut down the government but when push came to shove on Saturday night, he didn't even have the guts to stick with Chris Gibson (R-NY) and Richard Hanna (R-NY) and differentiate himself from the teabaggers and terrorists he knew were wrong. He voted to shut down the government. Today he was whimpering to Pennsylvania voters that "I’m prepared to vote for a clean res. tomorrow. It’s time to govern. I don’t intend to support a fool’s errand." He already did-- and he knows it and he knew it before he did it. This guy has no courage, no conviction. He's even worse than a teabagger!