atticus wrote:Charles,
If you are suggesting that Ted Cruz will be responsible for losing the House to democrats, I would point out the 2010 election that took the House away from the democrats. It was a similar wave of conservative enthusiasm that resulted in Cruz defeating Dewhurst in the primary last year. Without the base that elected Cruz, where will the Republican party be in 2014?
Don't read more into the post and related article than is written. A "shutdown" of the government will not work to the advantage of Republicans and/or conservatives. Cruz isn't to blame for a shutdown, nor did Cruz have anything to do with the Republican takeover of the House in 2010.
2010 was a mid-term election year when the party in the White House traditionally loses seats in the House. To make matters worse for the Democrats, public backlash against the Democrats' for the passing of Obamacare and Pelosi's record unpopularity as Speaker of the House, resulted in the largest midterm change of seats since the 1930's. Republicans gained 63 seats and became the majority Party in the House. They also picked up 6 seats in the Senate. Ted Cruz was not a factor.
Just two years later, in 2012 the Republicans lost 8 seats in the House. They lost 2 seats in the Senate at a time when the Democrats had almost three times as many incumbents up for reelection as did the Republicans. After four years of Obama, with the implementation of Obamacare looming on the horizon, and in spite of political pundits predicting that the Republicans would pick up seats in the Senate and possibly take a majority, we lost ground in both the House and Senate. Some who share my strong conservative beliefs claimed that the Republican candidates in 2010 (McCain) and 2012 (Romney) were not conservative enough to get conservatives to the polls. While this was somewhat true in 2010, it's absolutely false as it relates to the 2012 election. White voters turned out for Romney in record numbers, undoubtedly to vote against Obama more than to vote for Romney. Nevertheless, Obama won and the Democrats picked up seats in the House and Senate.
I don't think the Republicans are going to lose the House, but with only a 17 seat margin, it's certainly possible, and some Republican consultants are clearly worried. As the article I referenced indicated, a governmental "shutdown" will likely benefit the Democrats, but it will undoubtedly hurt the Republicans in 2014. At the end of the day, Obamacare is still the law, it's still funded, Democrats hold the majority in the ever-so-important Senate, and Obama is still President. Until and unless the Republicans take control of the Senate and White House, and retain a majority in the House, Obamacare will not be repealed or defunded. Anything that makes it more difficult to obtain the necessary Republican control is counterproductive.
I don't like this one little bit, but these are the hard cold facts. Many of the folks who ignore these facts are the some people who loudly and proudly proclaimed that it would be impossible for Obama to be reelected in 2012.
Chas.
