Key GOP figures on Wednesday sent their clearest signals that they are abandoning their bid to immediately stop the federal health-care law — the issue that forced the government to shut down — and are scrambling for a fallback strategy.
Petard, meet pavement.
Republican Party leaders, activists and donors now widely acknowledge that the effort to kill President Obama’s signature initiative by hitting the brakes on the government itself has been a failure.
Paging Erick Erickson.
The push to defund the legislation has cost Republicans politically. A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that only 28 percent of Americans view the Republican Party favorably — down 10 percentage points since September, and the lowest number for either party since Gallup began asking the question in 1992.
But, it was sooo working before the Republicans lost focus.
Some Republicans are aiming harsh recriminations toward those who had vigorously advocated linking the funding needed to keep the government operating to the drive to stop the health-care law.
And some Republicans have a Wile E. Coyote look on their face.
“I think it was very possible for us to delay the implementation of Obamacare for a year until Cruz came along and crashed and burned,” anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said.
And I think it is possible that Grover Norquist is every bit as much to blame for this mess as Ted Cruz.
Some of the most influential players in the conservative movement also were taking pains Wednesday to maintain their distance from the failed shutdown strategy, while reaffirming their opposition to Obamacare.
Who me? I didn’t support this catastrophe. Don’t you point your finger at me, I opposed ObamaCare before Obama was even born in Nairobi.
The chief lobbyist for Koch Industries sent a letter to Capitol Hill offices saying the company’s owners — heavyweight conservative donors Charles and David Koch — have never publicly supported the defund strategy, despite assertions by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and other Democrats to the contrary.
We didn’t fund the chicken that laid this egg.
Now that plan is in tatters, and party and movement leaders are trying to salvage something from what is widely acknowledged to be a politically disastrous few weeks. Instead, many strategists say, the stumbling rollout of the law has been overshadowed by the shutdown and a perception that Republicans have overreached.
“There is a strong sense of a missed opportunity,” Norquist said.
Idiots.
