Allah:
As others have noted, this is their Plan B after trying and failing to bait the GOP into impeaching Obama. They know they’re going to have a tough night in November if something doesn’t change dramatically and fast, and whining about Burger King moving to Canada isn’t going to be that something. The new deus ex machina: Convince the public that not only might Republicans shut down the government next year, they might shut it down this year, to punish O for his various monarchical excrescences.
The only major Republican they had talking up impeachment when we went through that a few weeks ago was Sarah Palin. For the shutdown, they have a few congressional power brokers:
In an interview with POLITICO this month, [Mitch] McConnell said he’d “guarantee” that a future GOP Senate would attach policy riders to spending bills, daring Obama to veto them. Two months earlier, according to The Nation, McConnell made similar promises to conservative donors.
But McConnell also has predicted little drama this September, when he believes Congress will swiftly avert a shutdown and return home for the midterm elections…
[Marco] Rubio told conservative website Breitbart that if Obama moves on an executive order that could allow millions of undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States, Republicans may tie a vote on overturning that action to a must-pass spending bill in September. Democrats swiftly moved to attack Rubio after his comments, linking immigration hardliner Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) to Rubio after King said on Wednesday that executive immigration action would alter “the dynamic of any continuing resolution.”
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is having lots of fun with Rubio’s comments, although Rubio didn’t explicitly call for a shutdown. He said he’d be interested in hearing ideas on attaching something to the next spending bill that would address Obama’s executive amnesty. Whether he’d accept a clean bill if Democrats block the sort that he has in mind was left conspicuously unsaid. Anyone think Rubio, who’s positioning himself as a guy who can unite conservatives and establishmentarians in 2016, is going to cast a critical vote to shut down the government on the eve of an election with the Republican donor class watching?
The most overt call for dramatic action if Obama goes ahead with amnesty has come from Steve King in the House, who thinks a shutdown is possible. But is it? Is there a critical mass of like-minded tea partiers willing to deny Boehner 218 votes? Here’s what Molly Ball is hearing:
