You know the GOP is in trouble when his is the voice of reason.
Karl Rove probably does have the math this time around, but
he's not going to convince Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) that there is no scenario in which Republicans will be able to defund Obamacare by shutting down government and not get beat up at the polls for doing it.
Lee sought Monday to move the debate away from the shutdown theatrics, instead putting forth a strategy in which the GOP-controlled House passes a bill funding the government that contains a rider from Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) that defunds the Affordable Care Act. Lee then said the tables would be turned on Senate Democrats to make the shutdown decision.
“Would they choose to shut down government?” Lee asked of Democrats. “Or do the right thing?”
But Rove said there’s not a single Democratic vote in the Senate for such a strategy and demanded Lee suggest Senate Democrats who could be turned to to defund the law. Lee responded that he wants to lock down Republicans first. Rove concluded Lee’s effort would backfire and be a replay of 1995, a government shutdown often blamed on the GOP.
“It counts on the Democrats, when the House sends over a bill, caving. And what evidence do we have that they will?” Rove asked.
Rove posited that if House Republicans followed Lee’s playbook, Senate Democrats would simply strip the bill of the Obamacare language and send it back to the House right before the Sept. 30 deadline, putting the shutdown spotlight again on Republicans. And if the House balked it would be a boon to the Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, Rove said.
Which is exactly how it would play out. Try as they might, there's no way Republicans could twist this to make the Democrats shoulder the blame for a government shutdown. But Lee refused to be convinced, insisting that Rove and other Republican critics were presenting a "false choice" between defunding and a shutdown (never mind that what Lee's defunding campaign has always included a shutdown threat) and that Republicans have to keep up this fight. “We cave and we cave and we cave,” Lee said. “This is how we get into trouble.”
At least he's got Hannity on his side. The radio host insists that shutting down government over Obamcare is "the hill to die on," and the "last stand" for Republicans. Easy for him to say, since he'll still have a job come 2015. There's a big upside to this fight though. It makes life for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that much more difficult. He has to decide whether he save his own sorry ass in his primary next year, or try to save the whole party for the general election. So that's fun.