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Who’ll Blink? Dems, GOP in Shutdown Stare Down

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

With the government teetering on the brink of partial shutdown, congressional Republicans vowed Sunday to keep using an otherwise routine federal funding bill to try to attack the president’s health care law.

Congress was closed for the day after a post-midnight vote in the GOP-run House to delay by a year key parts of the new health care law and repeal a tax on medical devices, in exchange for avoiding a shutdown. The Senate was to convene Monday afternoon, just hours before the shutdown deadline, and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had already promised that majority Democrats would kill the House’s latest volley.

Since the last government shutdown 17 years ago, temporary funding bills known as continuing resolutions have been noncontroversial, with neither party willing to chance a shutdown to achieve legislative goals it couldn’t otherwise win. But with health insurance exchanges set to open on Tuesday, tea-party Republicans are willing to take the risk in their drive to kill the health care law.

Action in Washington was limited mainly to the Sunday talk shows and a barrage of press releases as Democrats and Republicans rehearsed arguments for blaming each other if the government in fact closes its doors at midnight Monday.

“You’re going to shut down the government if you can’t prevent millions of Americans from getting affordable care,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

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Healing: White House Compares Republicans to Terrorists, Kidnappers, Arsonists (+video)

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

If you’re surprised by this administration’s poisonous rhetoric, you haven’t been paying attention. And once again, the self-appointed civility policy are strangely off duty. Go figure. Which brings us to Dan Pfeiffer, one of our beloved Post-Partisan Prince’s spokesmen. Pfeiffer’s name may sound familiar; he’s the brilliant messaging guru who informed the country that “the law is irrelevant” in regards to the ongoing IRS scandal. Now this jackass wants Americans to know precisely how his boss views his political opposition in the current budget disputes:

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer likened House Republicans to suicide bombers, kidnappers and arsonists in a single interview on Thursday. “What we’re not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest,” Pfeiffer told CNN’s Jake Tapper in laying out the president’s refusal to compromise with the GOP to win an increase in the nation’s debt limit…

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Obama: Republicans Would Own Government Shutdown

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Obama on Friday pushed Republicans to pass a spending bill and warned that he would not give in to their demands to defund Obamacare as Washington careened closer to a shutdown.

“If Congress chooses not to pass a budget by Monday, they will shut down the government,” Obama told reporters at a hastily-arranged press conference from the White House briefing room.

Obama said blame for a shutdown would rest solely on Republicans whom he accused of undermining the recovery because they “can’t get their way.”

The White House and Congress are facing an Oct. 1 deadline to keep the government funded and have achieved scant progress on a compromise thus far. In addition to the government-shutdown fight, leaders are up against an Oct. 17 deadline to increase the nation’s borrowing limit.

Conservatives are using the fiscal fights to try to block Obama’s healthcare reform law. Last week the House GOP passed a short-term spending bill that defunded Obamacare.

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Reid on Defunding Obamacare: “We’re Not Going to Bow to Tea Party Anarchists who Deny that Obamacare is the Law”

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared the House version of the bill that funds the government and defunds Obamacare “dead on arrival” in the Senate, accusing Republicans of trying to hold the country “ransom.”

On Friday, the House passed a bill that funds the government through December 15, while defunding Obamacare. Reid moved to begin consideration of the bill when the Senate returned to session Monday afternoon, but made clear that it would be sent back to the House without that provision…

“We’re not going to bow to tea party anarchists who deny that Obamacare is the law,” Reid said.

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Biden Calls Republicans ‘Neanderthals’

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Photo Credit: Matt Rourke

Photo Credit: Matt Rourke

Vice President Joe Biden said Repulican opposition to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in the House of Representatives came from the “Neanderthal crowd.” And he gave himself credit for coming up with the law almost 20 years ago.

“Packed into the front room of the Vice President’s residence just before 7pm, Biden spoke for about half an hour to the crowd of several dozen people, most of whom played a role in making VAWA a reality. The room was full of chatter as Biden was standing at the mic waiting to talk, so he turned around and let out a piercingly loud whistle, and the room went quiet. He talked about when he first came up with the idea for VAWA legislation in the early 1990s,” according to the pool report from an event last night.

“I caused a lot of trouble because I just started writing,” Biden said to laughs. “I’m serious. This isn’t one of these cases, I didn’t ask for staff help, I didn’t ask for any help, I was so God darn– gosh darn mad.”

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Tea Party Republicans Flex Muscle, Put Boehner in Tight Spot as Shutdown Looms

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

House Speaker John Boehner once again finds himself caught in the middle of a Capitol brawl between Tea Party Republicans and his Democratic counterparts, as he tries to navigate the choppy political waters and prevent a government shutdown at the end of the month.

Tea Party-aligned members of Boehner’s caucus are flexing their muscle and pressuring him to allow a vote on an anti-ObamaCare measure as part of ongoing budget talks. They want the vote tied directly to the budget measure, and rejected a compromise plan earlier this week — leaving unclear how Congress might pass a short-term spending bill before funding runs out on Sept. 30.

Boehner, after meeting with bipartisan congressional leaders on Thursday morning, offered no hint of what the next step might be. In the face of heated intra-party squabbling — and even nastier accusations flying between Republican and Democrats — he projected cool.

“There’s all this speculation about these deadlines that are coming up. I’m well aware of the deadlines. So are my colleagues,” he said. “And so we’re working with our colleagues to work our way through these issues. I think there’s a way to get there. … There are a million options that are being discussed by a lot of people.”

But Boehner realizes that the party’s public image going into the 2014 elections could be at stake, with Democrats eager to pin the blame on them if Congress can’t reach a budget deal and there’s a partial shutdown. Lawmakers came within minutes of a shutdown during a budget fight in 2011, and have continued to pass a series of short-term measures — leaving the prospect of a shutdown perpetually over the horizon.

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Meghan McCain: ‘We’re Not All Crazy Rednecks’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Meghan McCain said she respects the Republican Party, but wants to make clear: Some GOPers are crazy rednecks. She’s just not one of them.

In an interview with Politico, she also tried to make clear that she’s not a voice for young Republicans.

“I don’t espouse myself to be the voice of young Republicans at all,” she said. “I never have, and people sometimes want to say I go around saying I’m the voice of young Republicans. That’s not true.”

She said she’s only trying to show the public that the party is home to many voices — and not all are radical and fringe.

“We’re not all crazy rednecks,” she said, to Politico, adding that the party could use more members akin to Sen. Marco Rubio, whom she described as “more on the pulse” of where the GOP should head. “I’m just frustrated that nobody seems to be listening to reason. … People within the Republican Party don’t have to listen to me. But at some point they will have to listen to facts, to trends. … We’re losing young voters, women voters and minority voters.”

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Democratic Leadership More Pro-War than GOP Leadership

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Democratic leadership in the Senate and House are more in favor of military action in Syria than Republican leadership in either chamber.

Four out of eight members of Democratic leadership have stated they would support involvement, while the other four remain undecided but seem to lean toward an attack.

Meanwhile, just two out of 10 members of Republican leadership support a resolution to attack Syria. Two more are currently against but may be swayed. Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., is firmly against military action and the rest are either skeptical or undecided.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.: For intervention. “I believe the use of military force against Syria is both justified and necessary,” Reid said in a press release.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill.: For intervention. “If we can do something to discourage Assad and others like him from using chemical weapons without engaging in a war and without making a long-term military commitment of the United States, I’m open to that debate,” Durbin said in a press release.

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Drudge: ‘Why Would Anyone Vote Republican?’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Matt Drudge, founder and editor of the conservative website the Drudge Report, took to Twitter Tuesday to voice his displeasure with the Republican Party.

Tuesday morning, Drudge tweeted:

His rhetorical question was preceded by the assertion that there are no longer differences between Republicans and Democrats. “It’s now Authoritarian vs. Libertarian. Since Democrats vs. Republicans has been obliterated, no real difference between parties…” he wrote.

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DeMint: Republicans Unwilling to Defund ObamaCare ‘Need to be Replaced’

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Jim DeMintFormer Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on Monday night urged voters to replace any Republican lawmaker unwilling to vote to defund ObamaCare during next month’s budget showdown.

DeMint, the president of the Heritage Foundation, dismissed fears that Republicans would be blamed for a government shutdown, as they were in the 1990s.

“The risk of that is so much less than the risk to our country if we implement ObamaCare, and so I’m not as interested in the political futures of folks who think they might lose a showdown with the president,” DeMint said at a town-hall meeting hosted by Heritage Action, the think tank’s political arm, in Fayetteville, Ark., the first stop on a nine-city tour.

DeMint said President Obama believes he has the upper hand in the coming fight.

“I think he knows that Republicans are afraid, and if they are, they need to be replaced,” DeMint told NPR in an interview after the event.

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