Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID)
What happens when the tea party members of Congress who pushed the government into shutdown get together with the lobbyists who represent a Republican and business establishment concerned with occasionally getting things done and not crashing the economy?
Not talking about the shutdown, apparently:
Several attendees said they were frustrated the lawmakers did not address what they described as “the elephant in the room” on what they learned from the shutdown and whether they planned to force a similar standoff early next year when stop-gap government funding and the debt ceiling will be voted on again.
“Nobody asked what everyone wanted to ask them,” said one attendee.
“I think they felt the need for some outreach to the Washington echo chamber, but I don’t think they answered the big question on the mind of everybody. The shutdown was not brought up or referred to,” said one lobbyist in the meeting. “I would have thought maybe they would feel the need to talk about what was accomplished, how to move forward.”
When you're doing outreach and the people you're doing outreach to don't feel comfortable asking the single biggest question of the day, you have a problem. And the fact that these hardline House Republicans—Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Raul Labrador of Idaho, Diane Black of Tennessee, Tim Griffin of Arkansas, Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Steve Southerland of Florida, and Bill Flores of Texas—didn't feel a need or desire to address it? Republican dysfunction in action. It's good to see these guys setting themselves up to stay divided and at war with their own party.