A fight inside the Republican Party is why it’s possible that the Department of Homeland Security will be shut down this weekend.
One of the big stories that’s been flying under the radar this week is a potential partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Vox published a big explainer about the whole thing and a what a shutdown would mean a few days ago but it’s really pretty simple.
Republicans in the House passed a bill to fund the department but also put it provisions that would block President Obama’s recent immigration actions. When the Republican controlled Senate tried to pass it as well, Democrats filibustered it. Combine this with the fact that Obama would almost certainly veto such a bill and we are primed for yet another shutdown fight.
But that’s just what’s happening on the surface. As Jonathan Bernstein pointed out a few days ago what we are really seeing is a game of chicken between House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell. As Bernstein puts it, “Whoever veers off first will lose more True Conservative points.” That is whoever let’s a “clean” bill be passed funding the department without veto bait attached get’s labeled a weakling/moderate/Kenyan socialist by the conservative press, so both Boehner and McConnell are trying to make the other one pass such a bill first.
Moreover this is a fight that Republicans just can’t win both because they don’t have the votes to override a presidential veto and the simple fact is that the mechanics of shutdowns favor presidents, as we saw back in 2013.
There are lots of reasons these sorts of fights happen, but a main driver of this sort of brinksmanship is simply the fact that conservatives have unrealistic expectations about politics right now. That is they seem to think that they can force Obama to do what they want if they just act “tough” enough or find the right pressure point. This part of what drove the 2013 shutdown or the 2011 attempt to take the nation’s economy hostage over the debt ceiling. But the reality is that the American political system just doesn’t work that way. If you don’t have the votes to override a veto then there just really isn’t a way for Congress to force the president to agree to gut their own polices.
Unfortunately the modern dynamics of the Republican Party are more oriented around avoiding being labeled a RINO (Republican In Name Only) than they are about getting the best deal for your side. Hence all the shutdown brinksmanship.
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