Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Boehner Sells GOP Another Unicorn

++Hours before he went to the White House, Boehner assembled his team with Paul Ryan to basically leak to his caucus his idea to use the debt ceiling issue as leverage for reaching a grand bargain with President Obama. 

++There may be a reason he didn't answer questions of the media and Mitch McConnell made himself scarce.

++At lunch today the Republican Senators reamed Cruz out for getting them into a mess and demanded how he was going to get them out of it. Politico reported the story quoting anonymous Senators blasting Cruz and saying it was embarrassing because he tried to dodge their questions. They also demanded he renounce the attacks on Republican Senators by Jim DeMint's fund. He said he would not.

++By early evening, members of the Republican caucus said that they were holding tight because Boehner promised them he would go for tax reform,substantial budget cuts,and entitlement reform for raising the debt ceiling. The House Caucus was told to hang tight and stay together and not break for a clean CR. It was clear the Caucus believed him because Democrats failed to move a clean CR and the so-called moderate Republicans didn't budge. The Washington Post keeps posting new members saying they want a clean CR but this is a mirage.

++ Freedomworks is against any "grand bargain" and wants Obama to suspend parts of Obamacare because they want to dismantle it piece by piece by 2014.

++Bottom line--the government shutdown is to last until and maybe through the debt ceiling issue of October 17. Meanwhile, the GOP will keep passing single bills to shift the optics of the shutdown on to the Democrats. As one member said,"we're not going to be disrespected. We want something out of this. We don't know what it is."

++The Shutdown is now no longer about Obamacare but a full scale attack on the Obama Administration's priorities and the President himself.

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