To defund Obamacare or not to defund Obamacare that is the question, along with whether or not to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, that is allowing the Republican Parties base and conservatives to know who are the real leaders in the ranks of the GOP and who are just cream puffs.
Utah Senator Mike Lee along with Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky are currently trying to lead the effort to defund Obamacare in the upcoming Continuing Resolution by vowing not to vote for any CR or appropriations bill that provides funding for the much hated Obamacare. There are roughly a dozen Republican Senators and more than 60 members of the House who have signed on to the idea of not funding Obamacare in the Continuing Resolution scheduled to be voted on in September. They are willing to fully fund the rest of the federal government, just not Obamacare. This has in turned caused the Republican Party establishment including neo-statist like Karl Rove to fear that the effort by Lee, Cruz, and Paul would lead to a government shutdown because President Obama would veto any CR that doesn’t include funding for his health care takeover and that Obama and the media would use such a government shutdown to hammer Republicans.
Here is Karl Rove saying as much on Hannity Thursday night.
Rove was echoing the sentiments of North Carolina Senator Richard Burr who called the defunding of Obamacare effort, “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard” on Thursday.
The Hill has more:
“I think it’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” Burr told journalist Todd Zwilich on Thursday. “Listen, as long as Barack Obama is president the Affordable Care Act is gonna be law.
“I think some of these guys need to understand that you shut down the federal government, you better have a specific reason to do it that’s achievable,” Burr continued. “Defunding the Affordable Care Act is not achievable through shutting down the federal government.”
The Blaze has more on other GOP members of Congress joining in on the bashing on the idea to defund Obamacare.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned the GOP that the American people don’t want to see another debt ceiling fight and government shutdown “shenanigans.” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) also refused to support the plan.
In the House, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) likened the effort to a “temper tantrum.”
“Seems to me there’s appropriate ways to deal with the law, but shutting down the government to get your way over an unrelated piece of legislation is the political equivalent of throwing a temper tantrum,” Cole told Fox News Wednesday.
Instead, for Cole, it’s about the Republicans’ chances in the 2014 and 2016 elections.
“It’s just not helpful. And it is the sort of thing that creates a backlash and could cost the Republicans the majority in the House, which is after all the last line of defense against the president. And it could materially undercut the ability of the Republicans in the Senate to have the majority in 2014, which they have a decent chance to do,” he added. “And it could materially undercut the ability of the Republicans in the Senate to have the majority in 2014, which they have a decent chance to do.”
Another member of Congress that has joined in the “we can’t defund Obamacare” chorus is Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn would told the Washington Examiner that the effort was, “dishonest”.
In a phone interview from his home state of Oklahoma, Coburn slammed a dozen fellow Republican senators who have signed a pledge not to vote for any continuing resolution or appropriations bill that funds Obamacare, which is set to go fully into effect on January 1, 2014. “I’d love to defund it,” said Coburn, a physician who has opposed the president’s national health care scheme from the beginning. “I’d be leading the charge if I thought this would work. But it will not work.”
“The worst thing is being dishonest with your base about what you can accomplish, ginning everybody up and then creating disappointment,” Coburn said. “It’s a terribly dangerous and not successful strategy.”
“You’re going to set an expectation among the conservatives in our party that we can achieve something that we’re not able to achieve,” Coburn continued. “It’s not an achievable strategy. It’s creating the false impression that you can do something when you can’t. And it’s dishonest.”
Even syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer took issue with the idea of defunding Obamacare.
So far both Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have been silent on whether or not they support Mike Lee’s effort to defund Obamacare in the Continuing Resolution. CNS News has those stories here and here.
This defeatist mentality coming for the Republican Party establishment is infuriating to say the least. For years these same people saying we can’t defund Obamacare have told us we have to repeal the law for the good of the country. And yet when an effort springs forth that has some teeth to it that would actually accomplish something positive, they act like a protection racket for Obama and the Democrats.
If Obamacare isn’t defunded and one day out right repealed our economy will suffer, workers will continue to see their hours cut back, and health care cost will continue to soar.
By insisting on continuing to fund Obamacare Karl Rove, Senator Burr, congressman Cole, Senator McCain and the rest are proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are not leaders but cream puffs totally willing to sell out their principles, their party, and the country in an effort to avoid potentially negative press coverage. Cowards.
To bolster the effort to defund Obamacare a real leader within the conservative movement and GOP Senator Ted Cruz, via National Review Online, said:
On Sean Hannity’s radio show Thursday, Cruz criticized Republicans who “want meaningless show votes” to repeal Obamacare when they could actually defund the law’s implementation. If every GOP member in the House and Senate gets on board to defund the Affordable Care Act, Cruz said, “we don’t need a single Democrat vote.”
Cruz praised Senator Mike Lee’s campaign to defund the law, saying that Lee has led the effort to “stop talking about it and do it.” And “if we don’t do it now,” he added, “Obamacare will very likely never be repealed.”
“There a lot of Democrats and folks in the media who like their Republicans timid [and] house-trained,” Cruz said, but his party should not continue to appease them and let Obamacare become a reality.
The only way that Republicans will step up to the plate, the freshman senator said, “is if the voice of the people becomes so deafening that for incumbent politicians it becomes dangerous to do the wrong thing.”
Earlier this week Senator Mike Lee spoke out on behalf of the effort to defund Obamacare on Fox News.
Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul and the more than 60 members of the House who are trying to defund Obamacare are real leaders and this effort of theirs deserves our support and the support of every Republican in Congress.
It is an embarrassment that they are catching more flak than they are support from the GOP establishment such as this moronic piece at PJ Media by Rick Moran.
All of these neo-statist, and RINO Republicans are afraid of a repeat of the government shutdown of 1995. As Erick Erickson pointed out in a piece at RedState, they are afraid of a myth. The GOP did not suffer big loses in the 1996 election because of the government shutdown the year prior. In fact we only lost a handful of House seats and gained a couple seats in the Senate. And besides it isn’t like a government shutdown would be all that bad, the government shuts down every Friday night and doesn’t start up again until Monday morning.
Truth be told neo-statist like Karl Rove and RINO’s like John McCain and Richard Burr are afraid of their own shadow and have nothing but contempt for real leaders, real conservatives like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz.
The only way these cream puffs are ever going to do something effective against Obamacare or anything else for that matter is if you, the American people, relentlessly drill the point home to them that they had better sign on to this effort to defund Obamacare or they won’t be a member of Congress come the next election.
Write and call Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, Burr, McCain, Cole and the rest day in and day out and tell them as much. Defund Obamacare or start looking for a new job and get out of the way of real leaders like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz.
