How To Win The Shutdown Fight

Well, we're down in the muck of all this government shutdown crap. No one wanted to be here, and a lot of us would like to yell at GOP leaders how stupid they are, but that won't fix things. We're in it, and we can either make things worse for us with mutual recriminations (as usual), or we can try to win this battle. And I think we sort of can.

Now when I say "win," what do I mean? For starters, I don't mean defunding, much less repealing, ObamaCare. We shouldn't resign ourselves to that abomination, either; but evidently, the TOTUS is going to stake his legacy on the legislation, and I believe he would rather resign than abandon that goal. Besides, he's still got enough support from his base that he can't be made to give it up. Nor does it mean completely humiliating him at the negotiation table (if/when we ever get there). Neither side ever has total victory in these things.

No, a Republican "victory" in this showdown would consist of a couple different things. 1) While we almost certainly can't wrangle defunding out of the Dems, a further delay of key provisions or even some significant revisions are still within our grasp, at least theoretically. (What those revisions would be, I can't say; that's for people with a better knowledge of the ins and outs of health care.) 2) Although I've never been a huge fan of "PR triumphs," preferring real triumphs instead, the fact is there is a way for the GOP and its conservative philosophy to come out on top whatever happens with ObamaCare. And as events this week have shown, the Democrats have done quite a bit to help us along with that. But there's still a lot to do.

So for whatever it's worth, here are my proposed steps:

Step One: DON'T PANIC. First off, let's not automatically assume that Republicans are going to lose this fight and have their public image permanently trashed. Remember the speed at which the news cycle travels? The whole shutdown issue won't go away in voters' minds, especially if if gets conflated with the debt ceiling fight, but it's not going to be the deciding factor in the next elections. Those are still more than a year off. (That kind of undercuts my argument about being able to turn it around on the Democrats, but the important thing is avoiding a disaster ourselves, so that's okay.) As some pundits have been pointing out recently, making comparisons with the 1995-96 shutdown fiasco isn't a huge cause for worry, either; in reality, all sides bounced back to their previous approval levels soon enough, and Democrat wins in '96 probably would have happened anyway, given the economy and all.

Plus, keep in mind that as a result of redistricting, relatively few GOP congressmen are in swing or bluish districts and therefore in electoral danger, and that's not likely to change significantly regardless of the outcome. Which leads me into my next point...

Step Two: Talk To Your Public. Notice I said "Your Public," not "The Public." Again, most of the GOP congressmen are safe, because they have reliably red districts. A majority of them, being loyal to the Right, are naturally going to blame Obama and Senate Democrats for the shutdown crisis more than House Republicans. They'll get some blame, don't get me wrong, but not the bulk of it. This makes the advice being floated from some conservatives even smarter: If Boehner can't get any traction with Obama and Reid in the next couple days, he should let the bulk of fellow GOPers go home for a little while and get some feedback from their constituents. This is an okay move, because not only will they be seen as trying to respond to the desires of the public, they can come back and truthfully claim (based on what they've been hearing in their conservative districts) that the public gives equal if not more blame to the Democrats, and they're wanting Obama and Co. to compromise on this. If they won't, this is all on them.

Step Three: Get In Their Faces. As a certain famous politician once said. Obama and Senate Democrats have been providing conservatives with SO many openings this week. There's been Harry Reid's idiotic "Why would we want to help just ONE child?" line from the other day. There's Mr. Friend of Labor himself, the Prez, saying shutting down the government is as unjustifiable as a worker shutting down a factory because he doesn't like how it's being run (no, really). And there's all sorts of unhinged rhetoric from the Left about physically destroying the GOP for its temerity. Get on TV, ignore the gotcha questions from the reporters, and make the Dems own this rhetoric.

And while you're at it, guys, bring up the inadvertent admissions from the Left's own heroes. Bring up Bob Woodward's statement that the continuation of this shutdown is "on the President's head" for refusing to engage in serious discussions and creating a vacuum of leadership. While he's not exactly a major hitter in Hollywood, bring up actor Rob Schneider's recent announcement that he's switching to the Republican Party. Imply that it's the Democrats who are driving people away with their inflexible, extremist positions, and don't let up. The media will be forced to at least address it, and people will start to wonder.

Step Four: Be All Sweet Reason. As you probably know, the House Republicans have pushed through temporary, partial spending bills all this week, funding specific portions of the government, which have all been killed by the Senate. They should keep doing this. They may bear a lot of the onus for causing this shutdown right now, but the longer this goes on, the longer the Senate keeps rejecting these stopgap measures, the more people will start to wonder why Reid won't allow even a brief, incomplete respite. In fact, Boehner and the leadership should ramp it up. If the Senate will kill them anyway, expand these bills to include more and more of the government, and finally announce that you're ready to temporarily fund all the rest of DC (or as much of it as the rules allow) right now, if only Obama and Reid will agree to some further negotiations on ObamaCare. This is going to get noticed--and in that case, all the stories the media is running about those po' wittle civil servants going broke while unemployed may come back to bite the Left.

Now, this may not do the job, and in any case, we should limit our expectations. But a full-court press by the House, using all these tactics, will certainly force the public to rethink who's really responsible for this mess, and who's ready to fix it. And it's just possible, given the growing debacle with the ObamaCare rollout, that the Dems really will be forced to the bargaining table on this, too. Maybe not. But it's better than just bemoaning each other.

Any suggestions?