Who's Driving The GOP "Shut Down The Government" Agenda?

This week Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes had a typically gratuitous and nasty diatribe against President Obama in the Wall Street Journal featuring a bizarro-world right-wing reinterpretation of history; nothing new there. Peter King (R-NY) was on Hardball Tuesday telling Chris Matthews that there are about 30 to 40 Republicans in Congress who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency and are seeking to erase everything that’s happened during his administration.

Republicans and their propagandists are desperate to somehow put the onus for the government shutdown on the president while they celebrate it and congratulate themselves behind closed doors. As we saw Tuesday, shutting down the government was a carefully devised Republican Party strategy and a policy goal and the posturing around it is… just posturing.

As Ari Melber said in the clip above, "There are enough votes to fund the government but John Boehner is afraid to let democracy resolve this crisis." Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker explained it for NY Times readers a little more sensibly than Barnes. Where Barnes was babbling some kind of nonsense about John Boehner being a modern day Everett Dirksen, Weisman and Parker are more grounded in history-- and reality.

In contrast to 1995, when Speaker Newt Gingrich led his band of “revolutionary” Republicans into the last battle that shuttered the federal government, this time a small but powerful group of outspoken conservative hard-liners is leading its leaders-- and increasingly angering a widening group of fellow Republicans.

“We’ve passed the witching hour of midnight, and the sky didn’t fall, nothing caved in,” said Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, who still believes Republicans can achieve “the end of Obamacare.” “Now the pressure will build on both sides, and the American people will weigh in.”

Mr. King is part of a hard-core group of about two dozen or so of the most conservative House members who stand in the way of a middle path for Mr. Boehner that could keep most of his party unified while pressuring the Senate to compromise. Their numbers may be small, but they are large enough to threaten the speaker’s job if he were to turn to Democrats to pass a spending bill that reopened the government without walloping the health law. Their strategy is to yield no ground until they are able to pass legislation reining in the health care law; if the federal government stays closed, so be it.

And they believe they are winning.

“It’s getting better for us,” said Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho. “The moment where Republicans are least popular is right when the government shuts down. But when the president continues to say he’s unwilling to negotiate with the American people, when Harry Reid says he won’t even take things to conference, I don’t think the American people are going to take that too kindly.”

Representative Jeff Duncan, Republican of South Carolina, also did not flinch.

“We feel strongly enough” to hold the line, he said. “I was elected in 2010. I feel Obamacare is shutting down America.”

For nearly three years, Mr. Boehner has been vexed by an ungovernable conservative group made of up ideologically committed conservatives from safe House seats. The group has defied his leadership, rallied others to its cause and worn its gadfly status proudly. Earlier this year, the speaker disregarded them and passed three major bills that attracted only a minority of his party. Instead, he relied on Democratic votes to pass a budget plan that allowed taxes to rise on the rich, relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy and an expansion of the Violence Against Women Act.

That nucleus of that group has stuck in the leadership’s craw for some time. Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, has voted against Republican positions 136 times in his short stretch in Congress. Representative Paul Broun, Republican of Georgia, has voted no on Republican motions 84 times. Representative Thomas Massie, a freshman from Kentucky, is rising in the pesky ranks with 91 no votes in nine months.

In March, Representatives Matt Salmon and David Schweikert, both Arizona Republicans, responded with a threat to bring down any bill that did not have overwhelming Republican support through procedural maneuvers. The speaker has refrained ever since.

But the influence of the group is sparking an internal backlash, as a growing band of moderate and institutional Republicans are demanding that Mr. Boehner stand up to the conservatives-- to reopen the government and reach bipartisan accommodations in the future.

“You have somewhere between 180 and 200 Republican governance votes in the House, and going forward on this issue and many other issues, we’re going to have to find a coalition of Democrats to work with,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, “and recognize there is going to be a few dozen people on the Republican side who just aren’t going to be there on a lot of these major governance matters.”

With much of the government shut down, patience is wearing thin among some Republicans who see the maneuvering of the coalition of conservatives as counterproductive. In 2011, the hard-liners insisted on including a constitutional amendment to balance the budget in a House spending-cut bill, splitting the Republicans in a way that many believe led to fewer cuts in the final Budget Control Act than they would have had otherwise. In December, when they brought down the speaker’s proposal to let taxes rise on incomes over $1 million, Mr. Boehner was left with two choices: let the Bush-era tax cuts expire for everyone, or accept a bipartisan Senate plan that raised taxed on households earning over $400,000. He chose the latter.

“I’m not suggesting their motives are not legitimately felt, but you get to a point where we can accomplish something here, but we’re watching the speaker constrained on what he can deliver, a practical promise from a united House,” said Representative Patrick Meehan, Republican of Pennsylvania. “We retreat from a position of strength and accept something that’s worse.”

Now, many Republicans believe conservative demands to inflict real damage to the health care law is letting slip away the chance to make more realistic changes to the law, like a repeal of its tax on medical devices.

“They have never followed any leadership plan, and now all of a sudden the leadership has adopted their plans and we’re fully implementing their strategy and plan, which is I think is actually a lack of a strategy,” said Devin Nunes, Republican of California.

…To many Senate Republicans, the House’s position has now become mystifying.

“I can’t blame them for anything other than being sold a line that wouldn’t work, seeing the outside support and saying ‘maybe, maybe, maybe,’ ” Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, said of House conservatives. “Well, you know that train only in a children’s story actually gets to the top of the hill.”

So far 16 Republicans-- one less than needed, if Pelosi can keep right-wing Democrats like McIntyre, Matheson and Sinema in line-- have said they would vote for a clean CR:

• Jim Gerlach (R-PA)
• Charlie Dent (R-PA)
• Leonard Lance (R-NJ)
• Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ)
• Peter King (R-NY)
• Erik Paulsen (R-MN)
• Randy Forbes (R-VA)
• Pat Meehan (R-PA)
• Scott Rigell (R-VA)
• Frank Wolf (R-VA)
• Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA)
• John Runyan (R-NJ)
• Lou Barletta (R-PA)
• Rob Wittman (R-VA)
• Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-NY)
• Devin Nunes (R-CA)

Bolded names are in districts Obama won in 2008 and/or 2012. And... the magic number (17) came in yesterday afternoon. Mike Simpson (R-ID), who already has a crazed teabagger primarying him said: "I'd vote for a clean CR, because I don't think this is a strategy that works." And #18, Bill Young (R-FL) from a nice blue district. Two more: Richard Hanna (R-NY) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL). OK, then... all we need is for that drunken, orange Speaker to allow a vote and everything goes back to normal.

Best response for this so far comes from Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who in contrast to these 40 to 80 Republican absolutists and extremists in their gerrymandered little red hellholes, really is America's senator.