Friday, October 04, 2013

Public vs. Private

The government shutdown is still going on with no end in sight. If you watch Republicans discuss it in public, they do a fairly good job of pretending like they are unconcerned.

What they say in private is completely different. I love this account in today's New York Times about "the lynch mob" of GOP Senators who went after Ted Cruz in a closed door meeting this week.

Here's my favorite part:

Ms. Ayotte was especially furious, according to two people present, and waved a printout from a conservative group friendly to Mr. Cruz attacking 25 of his fellow Republican senators for supporting a procedural vote that the group counted as support of the health law.

Ms. Ayotte asked Mr. Cruz to disavow the group’s effort and demanded he explain his strategy. When he did not, several other senators — including Mr. Johnson, Mr. Coats and even Mitch McConnell, the minority leader — joined in the criticism of Mr. Cruz.

“It just started a lynch mob,” said a senator who was present.

Despite the uproar, Mr. Cruz did not offer a plan for how his party could prevail in the shutdown battle...

They really did all of this without the slightest idea of how to win it, how to stop it, or how to even save face when it blew up. Unbelievable.

Keep that in mind when you hear them speak between now and the day that they have to give in to the president.