Why Republicans Will Never Win the PR Battle on a Government Shutdown. And Why They Shouldn’t Care.

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  April 26th at 07:00 AM  | 

“Should Washington’s power diminish, reporters’ access to power would diminish. Smaller government is a deal breaker for the Washington press corps.” Conservatives are prone to lament a liberal bias in the media. There is another bias conservatives should play more careful attention to because it affects even the more relatively unbiased analysts and reporters that exist on television, radio, and in print. It is the | Read More »

It’s Pretty Much Our Own Fault.

By: Thomas Crown (Diary)  |  April 10th at 08:34 AM  | 

From the diaries by Jeff As a friend of mine recently put it, I join the gentleman from Texas’s remarks, and know that I cannot surpass them. I would, however, like to add something to them. Any honest reckoning of the budget deal the House GOP appears to have reached must view it as a result of negotiations in which one side — the Democrats | Read More »

Democrats’ Shutdown Spin Defies Logic

By: Curt Levey (Diary)  |  April 8th at 05:58 PM  | 

From the diaries by Erick. The charge: Republicans are willing to shut down the government over the issue of Planned Parenthood funding.  Democrats and the media are making the charge and Republicans are denying it – arguing that, instead, the disagreement centers on the total amount of budget cuts.  But the GOP’s denial only feeds into the assumption that everyone seems to be buying into, | Read More »

Why Won’t John Boehner Give HR 1297 A Vote?

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  April 8th at 10:44 AM  | 

Editorial Note: As mentioned below, there is late breaking news that the GOP and Democrat may have reached a deal for $38 billion in cuts and another continuing resolution. No word yet on if the Defense budget will be fully funded in the deal. UPDATE: I’m told that the Speaker’s Office does not think there is a firm deal yet, which makes passage of HR | Read More »

Barack Obama Takes Our Soldiers Hostage to a Shutdown

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  April 8th at 04:47 AM  | 

Over at Big Government, Mike Flynn has a fascinating post on what Barack Obama is doing to our soldiers. In the past, American soldiers were classified as essential personnel. Therefore, should the government shut down our soldiers would keep getting paid. But Barack Obama has decided to hold our American soldiers hostage to a government shutdown. The Commander-in-Chief has, via the Secretary of the Department | Read More »

Is Barack Obama Obfuscating the Cause of the Shutdown?

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  April 7th at 01:11 PM  | 

“The Democrats are so invested in the right to murder children they’ll let, to use the Democrats’ own rhetoric, old people starve.” The leftwing partisans are in full spin mode now after weeks of privately hoping for a government shutdown (though I have wanted one too). For a taste of the spin, go to Talking Points Memo. According to Talking Points Memo, Barack Obama and | Read More »

Why a Government Shutdown is Not a Bad Thing

By: Jeff Emanuel (Diary)  |  April 7th at 10:00 AM  | 

The same media and Democrat communications apparati (but I repeat myself) that have been claiming that the Republican-proposed budget would kill 700,000 children are now wringing their hands about a looming “government shutdown,” which we may assume would be fictively responsible for an astronomically higher number of deaths than a federal budget that spends 98.4% of what was spent the previous year. If passing a | Read More »

It’s Oligarchical Collectivism or Shutdown

By: Repair_Man_Jack (Diary)  |  April 5th at 12:39 PM  | 

DISCLOSURE: Repair_Man_Jack is a psuedonym for a person who works as a Civil Servant for the United States Federal Government. “A lot of people with budgetary responsibility are planning for a shutdown instead of for next year’s budget,” said Diane Breckenridge, who works in the office of the secretary of Health and Human Services. “It doesn’t add to the productivity of the government.” (HT: Washington | Read More »

Nancy Pelosi’s irrelevant budget objection.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  March 1st at 12:00 PM  | 

It’s looking increasingly likely that Senate Democrats are unwilling to die on the hill of opposition to 4 billion dollars’ worth of cuts in the short-term emergency funding bill to supplement the continuing resolution that the Republicans had to pass in lieu of a proper budget that the Democrats refused to even offer last year – yes, that’s a bit of a run-on sentence.  It’s | Read More »

Does Harry Reid Want A Government Shutdown?

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  February 28th at 11:32 AM  | 

If the continuing resolution is not passed by this Friday, the government will shut down — not that this is a bad thing. Everyone in Washington is claiming they don’t want a shutdown, but Harry Reid’s actions suggest he does. Instead of dealing with the continuing resolution when the Senate gets back for business this week, he will take up patent reform instead. The patent | Read More »