On Oct. 16, 2013 congress passed a measure that ended the government shutdown and raised the debt ceiling. These measures were a quick fix for an issue that needs a solution, instead of a patch. Even greater, this episode has served to show further cracks within the Republican Party itself.
As they say in various rehab groups (because let’s face it, it is time for the members of Congress to go to team building camp or something like it), once you hit rock bottom, there is nowhere to go but up. We are there, at rock bottom, and it is time to start learning from our mistakes.
This episode has highlighted the splintering of the Republican Party. After the shutdown, various moderate, non-Tea Party Republicans came out very publically to denounce the members of their own party.
“Let’s face it, it wasn’t a good maneuver,” said Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah (New York Times). Of course, politically, he, as a senator, would want to publicly denounce the shutdown measure. However, Hatch is a senior Senator in the Republican Party for Utah, and is considered “old guard Republican,” as is former presidential candidate John McCain.
The issue is that many Tea Party congressmen ran on the basis that they were going to end the Affordable Care Act, so they believed they had a mandate from their constituents. McCain disagreed, saying that when Obama was re-elected, the people spoke for the Affordable Care Act (Huffington Post).
Many Republicans agree with the message of the Tea Party, yet at the end of the day they are a strictly financial movement and stand for less government spending; they do not agree with the methods.
The Affordable Care Act was already approved and funded and there was no way that defunding the government was going to stop the Act from becoming a law.
House seats are going to be up in the next couple years, and this episode will come up in the elections.
It may be an effective election strategy to denounce the actions of the Tea Party, as well as publicly speak out against the shutdown. However, the Affordable Care Act is divisive. A conservative does not want to come out supporting the Affordable Care Act either because it is so widely unpopular.
Right now, there are huge problems with the website and Republicans are having a field day. This reflects poorly on the party because it looks like they want the Act to fail. Personally, I am not the biggest fan of the Affordable Care Act, but I would not want something so expensive that has the potential to help a lot of people to fail.
Instead of all the criticism, there should be actions taking place and a little creativity to salvage this bill and the website. Nobody wins if the Affordable Care Act simply fails. Setting it up to fail and wishing it would fail, just to prove a point, is unproductive.
This is the chance for the Republican Party to show some leadership and make a better situation. Instead, there is little to no leadership and splintering taking place, and so much so, that the Republican Party will take some significant hits in the next election.
