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Establishment GOPers assail tea party on shutdown - Yahoo Finance
I've said it over and over again. The Republicans allowed the savages from the Tea Party to take over and they'll be paying for it next election. As ****ty as it sounds, say hello to a weak GOP house, a Democratic Senate and another Democratic president next year guys. Thank the Tea Party for it. The best part is that the Tea Party fans will come here and tell me 75% of Republican are traitors or RINOs - insurgents to the cause or better yet blame the media for all the negative coverage the GOP hijacking is taking.
Party leaders interviewed said the tea party's demands to defund the health care law — and the House leadership's willingness to follow suit — were distracting from what they said is the GOP's best strategy to recover from its 2012 losses: a focus on reducing long-term spending. They said defunding the health care law would not achieve that goal because the money was already flowing to the law.
"At the end of the day, you're fighting legislation that's already passed," said former South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson, describing the fight to defund the health care law as a lost cause.
Republican activists around the country also said in interviews that the shutdown — and House Republicans' demands — have deflected attention from problems with the launch of key parts to the health care bill.
Thousands of Americans were unable to shop for health insurance on the online marketplaces when they went live on Oct. 1 because of software glitches. And, these Republicans say, the GOP in Washington — and specifically tea party House members — got in the way of the troubled rollout, which the GOP could have seized on if the government were still open.
"We're not saying Obama is right. We're saying what Republicans are doing is wrong," said Matt Cox, a former executive director of Ohio's Cuyahoga County GOP. He said that instead of pursuing the shutdown strategy, Republicans in Washington could have passed — and taken credit for — a spending measure that kept dollar levels at those set by the automatic $1.2 trillion across-the-board cut approved last year, also called the sequester.
Generally, these Republicans said that because of the tea party's effort to defund the health care law, the Republican Party had missed an opportunity to hammer Obama after he hit a rough patch over Syria just a month ago.
Former Illinois state Sen. Laura Douglas wants to believe that the holdouts can win. But she has her doubts.
"My heart says, 'Keep fighting, don't give up,'" said Douglas, a resident of Quincy in western Illinois. "But my head says, 'If we keep this kind of thing up, we're going to get creamed next year.'"
Her worries are reflected in the AP-GfK poll. Roughly three-quarters of Republicans nationally said their party in Congress deserves a moderate degree or most of the blame for the shutdown.
I've said it over and over again. The Republicans allowed the savages from the Tea Party to take over and they'll be paying for it next election. As ****ty as it sounds, say hello to a weak GOP house, a Democratic Senate and another Democratic president next year guys. Thank the Tea Party for it. The best part is that the Tea Party fans will come here and tell me 75% of Republican are traitors or RINOs - insurgents to the cause or better yet blame the media for all the negative coverage the GOP hijacking is taking.