The Patriot Post® · Strategic Blunders Cost GOP

The Republican strategy is a mess – so much so that Tuesday night the House GOP abandoned its proposal to fund the government through Dec. 15 and raise the debt ceiling through Feb. 7 in exchange for stripping the medical device tax from ObamaCare and forcing members of Congress and their staffers to live with the law. Speaker John Boehner’s plan was similar to the Senate’s version, but many Republicans objected to getting too few concessions on ObamaCare. The Senate proposal, which is also a temporary measure, includes just one ObamaCare tweak: An effort to verify incomes for subsidy seekers. The bottom line is that real concessions will not come until the GOP wins the White House.

The Obama Treasury Department says the nation has until Thursday before it sort of runs out of money, but as we’ve noted previously, that’s an overblown fear even if it does have markets on edge. Yet Fitch Ratings, the third-largest credit agency, threatened to downgrade the U.S.‘s AAA rating due to “political brinksmanship and reduced financing flexibility.”

> Update: “Senate leaders on Wednesday struck an 11th-hour agreement to avoid a U.S. debt crisis and fully reopen the federal government,” reports The Wall Street Journal. House Speaker John Boehner said that he will bring the Senate’s proposal to the House floor for a vote, and, if necessary, he’ll rely on Democrats to help pass it. The federal government – well, 17% of it – has been shut down for 16 days.

It’s unfortunate that at the very moment of ObamaCare’s Hindenburg-like launch, Republicans stole the spotlight with ill-considered strategy. House Republicans did manage post-shutdown to pass numerous partial measures putting Democrats on the spot, but it shouldn’t have come to that. All they had to do was get out of the way. Since the launch of Healthcare.gov on Oct. 1, the news cycle should have been dominated with stories of its outrageous cost, the overall technical disaster, no enrollees in several states and made-up ones in others, sticker shock for the few who successfully navigated the site and condemnation even from Obama allies. Instead, GOP infighting over strategy and tactics became the focus. And the end result will be that the government reopens and ObamaCare lumbers on.