Where's the populist revolt, guys?
by digby
I assume by now that everyone's seen the polls that show the GOP's approval rating sinking like a thousand pound boulder.(There are others that show a less extreme reaction, but still quite bad.) Let's just say that they haven't exactly been wowing the public with their wily strategy to end Obamacare.
I cannot help but enjoy the squirming of certain right wing bloggers, attempting to come to terms with all this. This is from Allahpundit, via Andrew Sullivan:
The Cruz strategy for defunding (or delaying) ObamaCare was, as I understood it, to stand firm even if it meant a shutdown and then wait for public opposition to the law to build to the point where O would have no choice but to cave. The only two major polls about the health-care law that have been taken after the shutdown, though, show its unpopularity decreasing. Where’s the populist groundswell that’s supposedly going to make Obama blink? Would five polls prove that the strategy wasn’t working? Ten? We know how this theory of populist revolt could be confirmed, but how could it be falsified?
Lulz. Yeah, that's a problem. I guess it never occurred to them that everybody with even half a working brain cell knew that the President would never agree to defund, delay or otherwise sabotage his signature piece of legislation. They have a majority in one house of congress which came about only as a result of gerrymandering. And yet they really thought there would be a populist uprising so strong it would force the president to abandon the major accomplishment of his administration. It's nuts.
Cooler heads knew better. The question is whether or not they can get enough members of their own party to realize that their dream is dead and to take what they can get. Which is substantial.
They're not there yet:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) fired up the conservative crowd at Friday's Values Voter Summit, painting the fight over ObamaCare as a battle for basic freedom and calling on Republicans to redouble their efforts to end the program.
Speaking without notes and walking around the stage, Cruz warned that the Obama administration wants to "violate every single one of our Bill of Rights" and attacked establishment Republicans for refusing to take up the fight.
"We can't keep going down the road much longer. We're nearing the edge of a cliff, and our window to turn things around I don't think is long — I don't think it's 10 years," he said.
Cruz warned "that train wreck, that disaster, that nightmare that is ObamaCare" must be stopped — and stopped now.
"If there is one overall strategy in Washington it is risk aversion," Cruz said, mocking the Republicans who didn't join his fight. "We went over their heads — to the American people."
He asked the crowd to keep up the fight, dismissing media reports that his push to defund ObamaCare was hurting the Republican brand. He joked that The New York Times was already writing about Hillary Clinton's second term.
"The greatest trick the left has ever played is to convince conservatives we cannot win. The media will tell us that believing in free market values, believing in the Constitution, believing in freedom are extreme views. It is a lie," he exhorted to cheers.
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