My must read of the day is, "Labrador: Shutdown Didn’t Hurt GOP, Why Take It Off Table?," in Roll Call:
Rep. Raúl R. Labrador has a message for Republican leadership as they decide how to respond to the president’s executive action on immigration and funding the government beyond Dec. 11: Keep a government shutdown as an option.
"I don’t think anything is off the table," Labrador told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday. "I don’t think anybody is thinking about a shutdown, but, in negotiations, you never take anything off the table. That’s the first rule of negotiating, and apparently it’s not one that’s been learned in Washington, D.C."
Asked if leaders are too "gun shy" about a government shutdown, the Idaho Republican was clear.
"I think they are and I don’t understand why," he said. "We had a shutdown a year ago, and we just got the biggest majority we’ve ever had in the House since 1928, and one of the largest majorities we’ve ever had in the Senate. So I don’t understand their reasoning for taking anything off the table."
This is an idiotic statement and idiotic rationale.
The shutdown of 2013 did hurt Republicans in the short term. Fifty-three percent of respondents said Republicans were primarily responsible for the shutdown. In the immediate aftermath, it had a negative impact on the Republican candidate in the Virginia gubernatorial race, giving the democrat, and now governor, a wider lead.
Fortunately for Republicans, a month later, most people seemed to forget about it.
In Virginia, by November, the majority blamed the president just as much as Republicans for causing the shutdown, and it certainly didn’t hurt Republicans in the general elections just last month—but that doesn’t mean the shutdown did them any favors.
It hurt Republicans initially, and then they were lucky voters had a short attention span. Republicans caved on their position sixteen days later, and they did not achieve their goal of defunding the Affordable Care Act.
Put simply: it was a complete waste of time, and a recent poll suggests it won’t be much different this time around. According to a CNN poll released Monday, fifty percent of respondents say they would blame Republicans in Congress if lawmakers fail to pass a spending bill to keep the government open.
So why would any logical person want to encourage his colleagues to try a shutdown yet again?
The rationale seems to be, "‘it didn’t destroy us the last time, it also didn’t produce any tangible benefits, so hey, let’s go for it once more because we don’t have anything else to do." It is stupid and puerile. At best it’s a gamble that it won’t damage the party for more than a month and it may help a little—in reality, it’s a waste of time and taxpayer money. Instead of legislating or focusing on crafting conservative policies that Republicans want to implement, it’s narcissistic grandstanding that does little beyond giving a handful of politicians a chance to elevate their national image.