In a column on his website RedState Tuesday, Fox News contributor Erick Erickson told Republicans in Congress that they should shut down the federal government in order to defund Obamacare and block any action on immigration. Per Erickson, Republicans won Senate and House seats in the midterm elections solely because they ran on a “we are not Obama” message and, therefore, must continue to oppose the President’s agenda. The conservative pundit also said that the GOP will not suffer any damage going forward because the previous shutdown did not hurt the party in this last election.
Erickson is the most recent influential right-wing voice to state that Congress needs to close down the nation in order to stick it to Obama. Last week, Rush Limbaugh said that the GOP “damn well needs to shut down” the federal government in order to stop President Obama from signing any executive orders on immigration. This chatter is sure to get louder at Fox News and the rest of conservative media, especially when Obama finally issues his executive orders and provides temporary relief to millions of immigrants.
The way Erickson sees it, using a working government and infrastructure as a political weapon is a winning strategy because Republicans didn’t suffer any defeats in the midterms from the last time they did it. Plus, in his mind, the GOP can turn this one around on President Obama and blame him for the shutdown. Even though Congress will be the one that actively shuts down the government, their strategy needs to be that Obama fully caused it to happen and he has the keys to reopen the doors.
[T]his is the second shut down where the GOP got blamed and saw no catastrophe at the ballot box. Again, after the shutdown the Clinton years, the GOP picked up Senate seats.
Every horror story every talking head within the GOP Establishment trotted out to scare congressmen and senators into caving turned out to be crap.
And there was a wave in 2014. In fact, it is a wave of such magnitude it is pretty hard to claim that if only the Congress had not shut down the wave would have been larger.
…
So set the course. Defund Obamacare and block amnesty. Obama can defy the will of the people and refuse to work with Congress. Sure, the GOP may get blamed. But so what?
And that is key here — so what. They got blamed last time and the public rewarded them with the biggest election wave in modern American political history from the local level to the federal level.
Block Obama. Let him show himself again to be the petulant man-child Americans have started recognizing. And this time, when he shuts down the government, keep it shut till you have your way and then hold public hearings to show how Obama selectively shut things down to hurt the voters intentionally.
So, there you go. This is what the ‘thinkers’ in the Republican Party want to happen with our country’s central government. Just as was feared with a GOP midterm ‘wave,’ the moment Republicans took over both chambers of Congress, the inmates were absolutely going to take control and push GOP leadership into enacting deliberate harm on the country. Why” Because Obama, that’s why.
However, Erickson does have a certain point here. There was no lesson to learn from the last government shutdown in terms of fear of political damage. While the GOP did take the blame and suffered in the polls, and the party as a whole still isn’t popular despite sweeping victories in the midterms, the end result of the last shutdown became two-thirds control of Capitol Hill. For the extremists in the GOP that pushed for the last shutdown or constantly say the debt ceiling doesn’t need to be raised, what is stopping them from continuing their destructive behavior?
The GOP took over the Senate and expanded their majority in the House. On local and state levels, they won hundreds of elections and obtained an even tighter chokehold on state legislatures and governorships. The message they received from the electorate in 2014 was to continue behaving badly. It is the same as punishing a child for burning down your house by taking the child out for ice cream and buying the kid a new XBox.
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