Rare News Desk
A lot of conservatives watched with trepidation when the government shut down, cheering Republicans’ effort to defund Obamacare, but fearing it wasn’t so much a matter of if they would lose, but when.
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But one week into the shutdown and it appears the predictions of an imminent Republican defeat have been greatly exaggerated—and they might even win.
Here are some of the signs that indicate the tide of opinion just might be turning in Republicans’ favor.
The media lapdogs start nipping at their masters. Perhaps the first objection that Republicans could win the shutdown battle was that the media would go on a 24-7 blame marathon, which would ultimately sway the public—and Republicans would cave.
Or maybe not. We tend to forget that the media were extremely unhappy with the Justice Department snooping on them, and accusing a respected journalist, James Rosen, of being a coconspirator in an intelligence leaking case.
And even the media recognize some of the White House contradictions, as when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer questioned spokesman Jay Carney about why as a senator Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling. CNN’s Jake Tapper has also been making White House officials a little uncomfortable.
For five years the media lapdogs have been hoping to get a bone from the White House, but when these pets finally turn, as some may be doing, they can bite back.
The White House steps up its pettiness. President Obama has to be the pettiest president we have ever seen—and that’s saying something. When he doesn’t get his way with budgets or tax increases, he immediately goes after the most inexpensive, but high-visibility government doings, like the White House Easter egg roll, White House tours, and now the open-air World War II memorial, the Amber Alert website, and the Normandy memorial, among others.
Instead of doing his best to minimize the public pain during a political stalemate, he does his best to maximize it. That has been a huge PR mistake, as mocking names like “Barrycade” and “Spite House” have begun to emerge. Whenever the public starts mocking a politician, he’s losing.
Obama feels pressured to look like he really cares. You know you’re having an impact when the most traveled president in history cancels an overseas trip. First he reduced it from four countries to two, and then he canned the whole thing. Not because he is staying in the U.S. to actively negotiate a solution to the shutdown, but the optics of him spending millions of taxpayer dollars flying overseas, entourage in tow, would undermine his message. So he’s staying in the U.S. rather than leaving the country, which, ironically, could be the biggest downside of the shutdown.
Republicans appear to actually have a strategy. Republicans jumped into this shutdown battle knowing what they hoped to achieve, defunding Obamacare, but not actually knowing how to get there—and they’ve been justly criticized for it. But apparently they have stumbled onto a strategy, which happens to be what they should have done all along.
After last December’s budget fight with Obama, [Speaker] Boehner (R-Ohio) said that the House would return to “regular order,” meaning it would follow the normal budget appropriations process.
There are 13 appropriations bills that fund the various segments of the federal government. All 13 are supposed to be drafted, passed and signed by the President by October 1. That’s regular order.
What Boehner should have done is tell his House committees last summer to move forward on their various appropriations bills, pass them and send each separate bill to the Senate. All the bills, that is, except the one funding the Department of Health and Human Services, and any other appropriations bill that played a big roll in funding Obamacare.
That’s what House Republicans are doing now, but they should have done it last summer.
Washington begins to realize that most Americans aren’t adversely affected. The biggest fear big-government advocates have is that most people will come to realize they are only minimally affected by much of what serves as our federal government—undermining their theme of how dependent we are on the government.
Team Obama expected a huge public backlash against Republicans. And while the shutdown is having a significant negative impact on some families, the vast majority of Americans seem to be going on with their lives with little or no inconvenience. That is not the message liberals want to convey. As a result, they may begin to press for a solution soon, before the public begins thinking “no government, no problem.”
This time last week, conventional wisdom expected the Republican leadership to be in disarray and House members to be looking for a face-saving way to cave to Obama’s demands. So far, that hasn’t happened, and House Speaker John Boehner deserves some credit for his unwillingness to give in.
And things may even be turning in Republicans’ favor as the media see the administration’s pettiness, inconsistencies, frequent lies and failures (e.g., the Obamacare rollout). Plus conservative media outlets have grown dramatically in the last few years, counteracting the lameness of the mainstream media.
Given a less inept administration, Republicans might have lost by now. But it increasingly appears they can win this budget and Obamacare battle—if they can stand firm a little longer.
Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas and a regular columnist for Rare and Forbes. Follow at @MerrillMatthews.
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