The Republican government shutdown isn’t going to be blamed on the President.
Steve Bell, a longtime Senate Republican budget expert now at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told Talking Points Memo that Republicans are fooling themselves if they think that they can get the public to blame the President for a government shutdown.
“If Republican leaders are going to be all tied up again with the debt ceiling and government showdowns, that really is a big negative. We went through this with Clinton. I was in the room when we did this. And it isn’t going to be blamed on the President.”
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According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, Bell has been around. He “served on the staff of U.S. Senator Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) from 1974 to 1986 and then again from 1996 to 2009. From 1981 until 1986 he was staff director of the Senate Budget Committee, which Senator Domenici chaired. Between 1986 and 1996, he was a managing director of Salomon Brothers, Inc., of New York, and started that firm’s Washington, D.C., office. He was nominated by President Reagan to be a member of the Federal Thrift Savings Plan Board and, after confirmation by the Senate, served in that capacity for four years. Bell was a weekly legislative and political analyst at CNN television for ten years. He is now principal of Steve Bell, LLC, a consulting firm.” Yes, he’s an expert.
Republicans actually still believe in their power to spread utter crap just by repeating it often. Thus, they keep telling the media that Obama is threatening to shut down the government. Speaker Boehner keeps desperately repeating this false narrative to the media.
ObamaCare is the law of the land. The Supreme Court upheld it after it was passed the way laws are passed in this country. So of course it should be funded. To NOT fund it is to be against law and order.
Which is exactly where House Republicans find themselves: Against law and order, and trying to blame Obama for their own petulance. They want to charge the U.S. taxpayer another 18.9 billion dollars to delay paying off their own bills in what can only be described as an endless temper tantrum against ObamaCare. It’s not going to work.
They can’t say they weren’t warned.
Republicans are suffering from a collective mental illness stemming from their own refusal to face reality. They’ve been buying their own propaganda for so long that they don’t even know they’re lying to themselves anymore. Even the leaders who should know better seem unable or unwilling to poke a hole in the collective delusions of the party.
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