Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Though the Republican shutdown caucus is loud and proud, there are plenty of congressional Republicans who don't want to piss off voters by partially shutting down the Department of Homeland Security. And they are not so happy with the "our way or shutdown" extremists. As "one senior GOP senator"
told Politico, "Never go into these things without a plan"—yet that's just what Republicans, pushed by their far right flank, have done. It's not working out for them so far.
“In our pushback, we can’t be crazy about it,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) who advocated only focusing on the 2014 initiative.
Whoops. Too late!
“Outside the Beltway, voters are worried about jobs, the economy, national security, taxes, etc and not solely DHS,” the email from the Senate Republican Conference said.
Asked if continually focusing on the DHS matter would distract from the long GOP agenda, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the conference chairman, would only say: “We have a lot of other stuff to do, yes, and I’d like to get to it.”
It's true that one happy outcome of this whole mess is that a Republican Party that's consumed by internal battles over one issue that's bad for Republicans is a Republican Party that's not passing giveaways to giant corporations and marketing them aggressively as jobs bills.
The internal fight is raging:
"I said the other night, when I was at the Republican meeting, that they are self-righteous and delusional," [Rep. Peter] King said on "This Week" of the Republican contingent holding up the bill because of their opposition to President Obama's executive action on immigration.
But for all the in-fighting, House Republican leadership is letting the extremists run the show. Which says a lot.