Article: Government Shutdown
Source: NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/us/politics/losing-a-lot-to-get-little.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131017
Losing a Lot to Get Little
Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times
Senator Ted Cruz, center, Republican of Texas, told reporters, “Unfortunately, the Washington establishment is failing to listen to the American people.”
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: October 16, 2013
WASHINGTON — For the Republicans who despise President Obama’s health care law, the last few weeks should have been a singular moment to turn its problem-plagued rollout into an argument against it. Instead, in a futile campaign to strip the law of federal money, the party focused harsh scrutiny on its own divisions, hurt its national standing and undermined its ability to win concessions from Democrats. Then they surrendered almost unconditionally.
Republican Leaders Speak
“If you look back in time and evaluate the last couple of weeks, it should be titled ‘The Time of Great Lost Opportunity,’ ” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, among the many Republicans who argued that support for the health care law would collapse once the public saw how disastrous it really was.
“It has been the best two weeks for the Democratic Party in recent times because they were out of the spotlight and didn’t have to showcase their ideas,” Mr. Graham added.
Now, near the end of a governing crisis that crippled Washington and dismayed a nation already deeply cynical about its political leaders, Republicans are struggling to answer even the most basic questions about the cause and effect of what has transpired over the last few weeks.
They disagree over how, or even whether, they might grow from the experience. Many could not comprehend how they failed to prevent such avoidable, self-inflicted wounds. Others could not explain why it took so much damage, to their party and the millions of people inconvenienced and worse by the shutdown, to end up right where so many of them expected.
“Someone would have to explain that to me,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “I knew how it was going to end,” he added.
“I’m trying to forget it,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, still in disbelief that many of her fellow Republicans could not grasp that this was a losing battle. “Here we are. Here we are. We predicted it. Nobody wanted it to be this way.”
All the while, they had the public on their side on the other issues that they could have litigated in the court of public opinion, like the need to get control of the nation’s long-term debt. And though they started the process last month with major advantages — a president on the defensive over an unsteady response to the war in Syria and an agreement by Democrats to keep financing the government at levels that many liberals felt were far too low — their fixation on the health care law prevented them from ever using their leverage.
“We managed to divide ourselves on something we were unified on, over a goal that wasn’t achievable,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. “The president probably had the worst August and early September any president could have had. And we managed to change the topic.”
The question so crucial to the Republican Party’s viability now, heading into the 2014 Congressional elections and beyond, is whether it has been so stung by the fallout that the conservatives who insisted on leading this fight will shy away in the months ahead when the government runs out of money and exhausts its borrowing authority yet again.
It is not an abstract question. The deal reached Wednesday would finance the government only through Jan. 15 and lift the debt ceiling through Feb. 7. Some top Republicans suggest that this confrontation, one some of the most conservative Tea Party-aligned Republicans have been itching for since they arrived, ended so badly for them that it would curb the appetite for another in just a few short months.
Many Republicans are already calling for a refocusing of priorities, saying the party must turn to bigger issues like revising the unwieldy and unpopular tax code and reducing the long-term deficit. As for the health law, some believe there is a more winnable fight to be had with tough Congressional scrutiny of its rollout over the next year.
“Now we’re going to shift to oversight of the health care law, and clearly there are huge problems,” said Representative Dave Camp, the Michigan Republican who leads the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. “Now we’re going to have to pursue what is this law really doing for Americans. Is it working and is it delivering?”
Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, said, “We can all take a deep breath and basically refocus.”
In the Senate, there were already signs that an emergent group of 14 centrist senators from both parties was looking to make an impact on the fiscal battles ahead. The group, led by Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, has already planned to meet in the coming weeks. Mr. McCain, also a member, said Wednesday, “We are not going to let this kind of partisanship cripple this body and injure the American people.”
Speaker John A. Boehner’s strategy always involved a gamble that his members would come away from this clash chastened. He intentionally allowed his most conservative members to sit in the driver’s seat as they tried in vain to get the Senate to accept one failed measure after another — first to defund the health care law, then to delay it, then to chip away at it. His hope was that they would realize the fight was not worth having again.
The worry among many Republicans is that the Tea Party flank will not get the message, mainly because their gerrymandered districts are so conservative they do not have to listen.
Some fear that history is repeating itself. After Mitt Romney’s defeat in which the Republicans lost the popular presidential vote for the fifth time in six elections, the party tried to regroup. Its establishment warned that it had to stop being so shrill, so exclusionary and so narrowly focused on issues that alienate large chunks of voters who might otherwise think about being Republicans.
Certainly, the budget fight showed that Congressional Republicans have divergent ideas about how to heed that advice.
On Wednesday, Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South Carolina, offered his party some thoughts on what it should do about the health care law come January and February.
“The natural inclination is to say, no, it’ll be exactly the same,” he said. “But if we can figure out a way to drive that message home that this is about fairness, this is about principle,” he added, “then the outcome may well be different.”
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