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Tossed from their old party, conservatives are looking to form their own

Routed, betrayed by GOP leaders DC conservatives talk third party



The mood among conservatives on Capitol Hill is glum as Republican leaders from the House and Senate negotiate their party’s surrender to President Barack Obama.
Three weeks after Sen. R. Edward Cruz (R.-Texas) and his comrades-in-arms, notably senators Randall H. Paul (R.-Ky.), Michael S. Lee (R.-Utah) and Marco A. Rubio (R.-Fla.) held the Senate floor for more 21 hours of extended debate on the need to defund Obamacare, Capitol Hill conservatives are warming to the idea that their Republican Party home is no longer home. The crusade to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act began in the spring, and took solid form in the summer months as senators, their staffs and outside advocacy groups, such as Heritage Action and Freedom Works, coordinated with allies in the House and the GOP leadership. From the time Cruz took the Senate floor Sept. 24 until his yielding to the Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D.-Nev.), the reaction from the country was electric—and as the press mobbed the Texan on his way out of the Capitol, it seemed the effort to defund the Obama’s healthcare reform had with Americans in the same way Paul’s drone filibuster did in March.

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The stage was set for battle as the Sept. 30 end of fiscal year 2013 approached and conservatives were ready. Now it all seems like decades ago. Obama himself was keen for a showdown, too, and when the president rejected any discussion, Republican leaders quickly took their bargaining position from defunding Obamacare, to delaying Obamacare, to delaying the Individual Mandate, to revoking Obamacare subsidies for Congress and its staff, to eliminating Medical Device Tax, to delaying the Medical Device Tax for two years. One needs a ticker tape to keep track of the Republican caves and concessions. As of noon Oct. 15, the GOP has secured the promise from the Democrats that they will talk about what to do about the Medical Device Tax and a $65 fee charged to employers by the healthcare program will be eliminated. Put aside the discussions of parks and debt ceilings, remember, this fight was about defunding and defeating Obamacare—a program the GOP 2012 platform called a “fiscal nightmare.” Faced with the political nightmare of Republican leaders and their rump of loyalists forming a parliamentary majority with Democrats and the president, conservatives are about to bolt. In the Senate, the Democrats already have more than six GOP senators on the shelf, to cross the aisle to end conservative filibusters. In the House, Speaker John A. Boehner (R.-Ohio) has already relied on Democratic votes to secure the Fiscal Cliff deal, and the only reason he lost the farm bill vote is that the House Minority Leader Nancy D. Pelosi (D.-Calif.) withdrew enough of her caucus’ votes to teach Boehner a lesson. When the farm bill returns and the bill granting amnesty to illegal aliens is presented, the new coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the House will pass both bills, leaving the conservatives on the outside looking in. Tossed from their old party, conservatives are looking to form their own. While some conservatives want to focus on primaries, most notably against senators A. Mitchell McConnell (R.-Ky.), the GOP Minority Leader; John Cornyn III (R.-Texas), the GOP Whip and Lindsey O. Graham (R.S.C.), an amigo of arch-apostate Sen. John S. McCain III (R.-Ariz.)—and of course: Boehner. The chief difference between a political action committee and a party is that a party is allowed to coordinate openly and fully with a candidate. The question now is whether how to call for a gathering of the clans, where the new party can be created and set to work.


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Neil W. McCabe -- Bio and Archives

Neil W. McCabe is the editor of Human Event’s “Guns & Patriots” e-letter and was a senior reporter at the Human Events newspaper. McCabe deployed with the Army Reserve to Iraq for 15 months as a combat historian. For many years, he was a reporter and photographer for “The Pilot,” Boston’s Catholic paper. He was also the editor of two free community papers, “The Somerville (Mass.) News and “The Alewife (North Cambridge, Mass.).”


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