Peter King: Ted Cruz Has Tapped Into a Dark Strain of the American Political Psyche) joined Chris Wallace and Rep. Tom Graves on Fox and admitted the obvious to the beltway false equivalency media. Republicans did shutdown the federal government plain and simple.

WALLACE: Congressman King, Democrats are now pushing a discharge petition to take this idea of a clean CR out of committee to bring it to the House floor for a vote. There are 200 Democrats who have agreed to sign that, in fact, they are going to need at least 17 Republicans in the House. Will you support a discharge petition?

KING: No. Let me first tell you, I don't consider myself a moderate. I'm a Reagan conservative. Having said that no, I would not. And by the way, one thing that Tom Graves and I can agree on is that the Democrats in my mind are also being irresponsible here. The president of the United States has an obligation to get involved. He is the head of the Democratic Party, he's doing a very good job at that, but he's also the head of the entire country. And I can't picture Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson or Bill Clinton or John Kennedy standing on the sidelines while this was going on. He has an obligation to get involved. Whether he calls it negotiations, whatever else he wants to call it, the fact is if this situation is as serious as he say it is, I think it is as far as a default on the debt, then he has an absolute obligation as president of the United States to get involved. I think it's irresponsible--

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Sir, if you could answer my direct question, though, why won't you sign a discharge petition?

KING: It's not going to go anywhere. And also the Democrats are not bargaining in good faith. You have to get -- there is no way in the world you're going to get 25 Republicans to go on that, and having said that, I wouldn't go out because they're, as I said, not bargaining in good faith here right now.

I'm committed to making this work. That's why I have been against this government shutdown from the start. Where I am disagreeing with Tom is we are the ones who did shut the government down. Charles Krauthammer called it the suicide caucus. I mean, "Wall Street Journal" said we're kamikazes. Don't take the dramatic step of shutting down the government unless you have a real strategy, and a chance of working -- this never had a chance to work. And now we're almost pushing ObamaCare to the side, and we're talking about other issues, and people are still out of work, and the government is still shut down.

King had to attack Democrats in the exchange to appease his colleagues and his own ego because the idea that Democrats are the irresponsible ones in this shutdown is ludicrous. However, King does destroy the phony meme that the shutdown is the president's fault.

Update: Josh Israel on the discharge petition:

Though King and at least 19 fellow Republicans have said they would vote for a clean bill to reopen the government immediately, none have voted with House Democrats on repeated attempts to hold a vote on doing so. A discharge petition, a little-used parliamentary maneuver used by a majority in the U.S. House to bring a bill to the floor without the Speaker’s consent, would require 217 signatures.

(h/t Heather for making me the video)