Sen. (of eight months) Ted Cruz is a brilliant political strategist who has the perfect plan to get what he wants, the defunding of Obamacare. Where his real genius comes into play is that it has been the same plan, all along. Does no one realize how easy this is? Here's how it works:
1) The House passes a continuing resolution that defunds Obamacare.
2) The Senate passes a continuing resolution that defunds Obamacare.
3) President Obama signs into law a continuing resolution that defunds Obamacare.
The Republicans who don't think this will work -- the GOP leadership, most congressional GOPers, Grover Norquist, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Charles Krauthammer, etc. -- simply don't understand how the federal government works, like Ted Cruz does. Didn't they ever take a college class on government or the Constitution or anything? Ted Cruz took a lot of college courses, at Harvard, and Princeton. (His safety school was the original Plato's Academy, probably.) He knows that when the House passes a bill, and then the Senate passes a bill, and then the president signs it, it becomes law. The sissypants communist RINO caucus must know this. What is their problem with this strategy? They must love Obamacare, Ted Cruz might surmise, with his intellect.
The surrenderistas in the House leadership have begun to see the light, finally, and will now move a House bill that includes the defunding of Obamacare in a continuing resolution. Was that so hard? Once it gets out of the House, Ted Cruz will use his masterful college debating skills to persuade the Senate to pass it 100-0, the president will hear the message, and Obamacare will be no more.
Nevertheless, there are some simpletons out there who don't really "get" this yet. Don't criticize them; some people just, you know, take a little more time to understand basic concepts that Ted Cruz intuitively grasps? So let's address some of their common delusions here, in the hope that something registers in their mortal brains.
There are those who say that the Democratic Party controls the Senate and the White House. Here is Grover Norquist, who also went to Harvard (but must have flunked out or ...??), making this argument.
"You've got to ask for things the other team can sign off on — not because we're being terribly bipartisan, but because the other team has the Senate and the White House," Norquist told Business Insider in an interview.
The ultimate goal doesn't differ: a full repeal of Obamacare. But the messaging, Norquist said, has led to confusion.
"It's not where the conservative movement needs to be, because we miscommunicate to voters that somebody is not a good conservative because they have a different vision of how to get to the same place."
Well, the people who believe this are just "scared," that's all. They are cowards. Grow a spine! Now that's been resolved and Ted Cruz has won the point with perfect logic. Next?
Others believe that if the Democrats in the Senate and White House are a little slow to realize that they must defund Obamacare, the government will shut down, and Republicans will take the blame when people stop getting their checks. This was a hot topic at a recent House GOP meeting (emphasis added):
Republicans on Capitol Hill are abuzz about a flare-up that occurred in the Republican Study Committee’s weekly staff meeting.
Neil Bradley, a top aide to Majority Leader Eric Cantor, made a rare appearance at the meeting to discuss CR strategy. During that discussion, Bradley said that in the event of a government shutdown, U.S. soldiers would not receive their paychecks.
Max Pappas, an aide to Texas senator Ted Cruz who was on hand, rose to argue that in the event the House and President Obama were at odds when government funding expired, Republicans could pass a bill to fund the troops and other core priorities.
At that point, a woman rose, identifying herself as a staffer to a Texas Republican. Pappas, she said, was “not dealing in reality” and making everyone else’s life difficult. The staffer, whom two GOP sources identified as working for Representative John Culberson of Texas, went on to decry Cruz for holding events in Culberson’s district and telling his constituents that defunding Obamacare would be “easy.”
Got it? If the Republicans are in a pickle during a shutdown, they can just pass a bill that takes away Democrats' leverage, and the Senate and the White House will swiftly move on that bill that takes away their own leverage. CHECK YOUR SPINE, LADY.
Now say -- and this is a major hypothetical, but just for fun -- say for some reason this strategy of eliminating the president's key legislative accomplishment somehow falls apart during the continuing resolution fight. A shipment of sturdy spines is delayed in the mail, maybe. Is there a Plan B? Yes, duh. It will be tying the defunding, or at least delay, of Obamacare into the debt ceiling fight:
Which is why it is hard to puzzle out an endgame. House Republicans frame the gambit as an opening offer that sets up a game of ping-pong proposals. “Assuming we don’t meet success there, I think we’re gravitating toward a Plan B, which is to connect a delay of Obamacare to the debt ceiling,” says Republican Congressman John Fleming of Louisiana. Like many House Republicans, Fleming believes GOP leaders have greater leverage if they dig in on the debt limit, despite the Treasury Department warnings that the economic consequences of default would be catastrophic. And like several dozen other conservatives, Fleming is willing to risk default if Obama won’t acquiesce to GOP demands.
Finally, someone who gets it, someone whose intellect at least approaches the same solar system of Ted Cruz's. What the actual spine-having conservatives get that the so-called "experts" and RINOs who worry about the U.S. tapping out its borrowing limit don't is that "nothing happens" when the limit is reached, anyway.
“I am,” Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) told POLITICO, when asked if he’s willing to forgo raising the debt ceiling without a delay to Obamacare. “Technically, it’s not possible to default because there’s always enough revenue to cover the interest. If we defaulted it was because the president chose to default, not because we ran out of money.” Fleming said “nothing happens” if the debt ceiling is reached.
Look. Nobody's really pleased with Washington these days. They see problems everywhere. But there's only one problem at the root of all of it. Not enough people are willing -- or just don't have the brain capacity -- to see that Ted Cruz and his 30-40 allies in the House are always right about everything, so just trust them, OK? Don't surrender to the naysayers. But please do surrender, completely, to Ted Cruz. He's got it all figured out.
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