The Republican Party has devolved into a circular firing squad as its government shutdown enters its second week, with GOP leaders struggling to stay on message to avoid blame.
As Democrats remain unified and steadfast in their assertion that Republicans need to negotiate with them on extending health care subsidies to prevent Americans’ from seeing massive spikes in insurance premiums, congressional Republicans are unable to get on the same page about their strategy as polling shows that voters blame them for the shutdown.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune gave conflicting answers at the same news conference about whether Republicans will pass legislation to ensure that members of the military and air traffic control will still get paid while the government is shut down.
“I’m certainly open to that,” Johnson said. “We’ve done it in the past. We want to make sure that our troops are paid.”
But then Thune immediately shot that down.
“You don’t need that,” Thune interjected. “The simplest way to end it is not try to exempt this group or that one or that group. It’s to get the government open.”
There are also cracks forming in the GOP’s lies about what Democrats are asking for in their funding negotiations.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who is usually a loyal servant to President Donald Trump, is criticizing her own party for not negotiating with Democrats to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. If subsidies aren’t extended, millions will see their premiums more than double.
“I’m not some sort of blind slave to the president, and I don’t think anyone should be,” Greene told NBC News on Wednesday. “I serve in Congress. We’re a separate branch of the government, and I’m not elected by the president. I’m not elected by anyone that works in the White House. I’m elected by my district. That’s who I work for, and I got elected without the president’s endorsement, and, you know, I think that has served me really well.”
The fact that Greene is backing Democrats—who are demanding that Republicans negotiate with them to extend health care subsidies for low-income Americans—is clearly getting to GOP leadership.
"The story is getting old," Thune whined on Wednesday to reporters, who for once are actually doing their job by refusing to parrot GOP lies. "You're trying to find new angles, it's the same conversation we're having: Fund the government."
Meanwhile, Republicans are also struggling to defend Trump's threats to carry out mass firings of federal workers as punishment for the shutdown, as well as withhold back pay to federal employees who have been furloughed.
GOP lawmakers are playing dumb about whether Trump’s withholding of back pay violates a law that many of the same GOP lawmakers helped pass back in 2019, during one of Trump’s many government shutdowns.
“I'm not familiar, exactly, with the statute that they might be citing, but I do know that there are going to be a lot of people starting this week, who are either not going to get fully paid or being partially paid or not paid, and next week, the military gets hit by this,” Thune told reporters Tuesday. “So the sooner they vote to open up the government, the sooner this becomes a nonissue.”
GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who usually serves as Trump’s attack dog, struggled mightily in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins to defend Dear Leader on withholding pay.
“So you voted in 2019 that federal workers who are furloughed should get their back pay. So why is your position different now?” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Jordan.
“It's not different now. It depends on what the president decides to do,” Jordan replied, admitting that he thinks it’s fine if Trump decides to break a law that Jordan himself voted to pass.
What's more, it seems that even the evil goons in Trump's administration are getting cold feet about the job cuts and threats to withhold pay, as they have yet to actually pull the trigger on any of it.
“There’s an increasing acknowledgment within the West Wing that the politics of RIFs [reductions in force], at a moment when we know our message on the shutdown is the better one, would be better later,” a White House official told CNN. “And we do not want to appear gleeful about people losing their jobs, of course.”
Sure, the administration that has gleefully gotten rid of hundreds of thousands of federal employees doesn’t want to seem excited about cutting even more jobs.
To add insult to injury, polling continues to show that Americans blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown more than they blame Democrats—the biggest sign that the GOP's lies about the shutdown are not working.
A Navigator Research survey released Wednesday found that 39% of registered voters blame Trump and Republicans, while just 28% blame Democrats.
"A reminder on the 8th day of this Republican shutdown: Speaker Johnson could call Members back to negotiate to re-open the government any time he wants. He's choosing not to," Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington wrote on X. "Republicans would rather raise costs and kick millions of Americans off their health care."
And that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
