Tea party ringleader admits the GOP shut down the government for nothing

[ProSense]

Tea party ringleader admits the GOP shut down the government for nothing

by Jed Lewison

What if I told you that one of the leaders of the tea party strategy to stop Obamacare by shutting down the Federal government didn't actually believe it was possible to repeal Obamacare until 2017 at the earliest but pushed forward with his plan anyway?

You'd probably get pretty mad, right? Shutting down the government over an unrelated policy dispute is bad enough, but if the people shutting the government down didn't even believe that their strategy would work, then they'd be guilty of inflicting pain and creating chaos for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

It might be hard to believe that anyone would admit to such a thing, but Wednesday morning on Fox News, that's exactly what Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham did. He started out by explaining that Republicans had shut down the government because they don't want to "allow" Obamacare to "go forward" because they believe it must be stopped "before January 1":

The reason the government is shut down is Obamacare is unfair, it's unaffordable, it's unworkable, every single day there's more evidence of that coming out. House Republicans have remained strong in saying we are not going to let this bill go forward. We're not going to allow this to be inflicted on the American people. <...>

I think that almost every member of the House Republican conference, if not all of them, is deeply concerned about Obamacare, and knows that we have to do something before January 1 to stop it.

Then, less than sixty seconds later, he admitted that this strategy was doomed:

Well, everybody knows that we're not going to be able to repeal this law until 2017, and that we have to win the Senate and win the White House.

Well, as infuriating as the GOP nihilistic strategy has been, one thing is for sure: It's now a whole lot less likely that come 2017, they'll still be in control of the House—let alone the Senate or presidency.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/16/1247832/-Tea-party-ringleader-admits-the-GOP-shut-down-the-government-for-nothing

It's not a "bill," moron. It's the law.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023760563

GOP Prepares For Surrender On Debt Ceiling And Shutdown
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023861403

Stupid fucks!

[FSogol]

1. K & R. n/t

[maryellen99]

2. way to go GOP morans

You probably have wrecked the economy anyway

[russspeakeasy]

3. Thank you for this post.

[William769]

4. Kick & recommended.

[AtomicKitten]

5. FFS, he referred to the ACA as a "bill."

It is a LAW affirmed by 2 presidential elections and a Supreme Court decision.

[ProSense]

12. Keeping idiot teabaggers in the dark. n/t

[lastlib]

18. ...and 43 FAILED attempts to repeal it!

(let's not forget those!)

[lostincalifornia]

6. I have a secret for them, if they think they can repeal it in 2017 they will be wrong on that also

[HappyMe]

7. Stupid fucks, indeed.

[ProSense]

24. Any day that teabaggers have a sad is a good day.

You think anyone is confusing the political hit the Republicans took with everything is alright in the world?

Such Democratic unity is rare and worth relishing a bit.

Keep reminding people that the teabaggers are delusional and dangerous.

Also, I'm for beating them while they're down.

[Mikeystyle]

8. I figured out how to make money from this

we can sell rattles and pacifiers to the tea party crybabies who want to shut down the government because they didn't get their way

[Coyotl]

9. The plan all along was to crash the "Obama Recovery" of the economy for 2014 elections.

Let's give credit where credit is due, they have stalled the economy.
They are up to something, the plan is not overt, and it is working.

[gademocrat7]

10. K&R

[JHB]

11. He's also on Wingnut Welfare

Michael A. Needham's Experience
Chief Executive Officer
Heritage Action for America
Nonprofit; 11-50 employees; Political Organization industry
April 2010 – Present
Heritage Action for America is a grassroots advocacy organization dedicated to promoting conservative values, policy priorities, and ideas.


Special Assistant
Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee
Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Political Organization industry
2007 – 2008 (1 year)


Chief of Staff and Director
The Heritage Foundation
Nonprofit; 201-500 employees; Think Tanks industry
2004 – 2007 (3 years)

Michael A. Needham's Education
Stanford University Graduate School of Business
MBA
2008 – 2010

Williams College
BA, Political Science & Economics
2000 – 2004

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michael-a-needham/18/25a/2a7

As the conservatives used to say, he has never had a real job. 100% of his time in a "think" tank or "political organization industry" when not in college. If Heritage hadn't hired him straight out of college (for "Chief of Staff and Director"? at age 22?) the Bushies would have had him in Iraq trying to run the Iraqi economy, like they did with other "sent a resume to Heritage" youngsters.

Speaking of Iraq, please note when he got out of college. Military service is conspicuously absent from his resume during a time of war.

Remember the 2007 video about the College Republican convention, how they all supported the war and the military...as long as it was someone else? Mike was a little older, but the exact same type.

[Comrade Grumpy]

13. I hope we can wipe these guys out in the mid-terms. It's like they have a suicide pact.

[yuiyoshida]

14. Please let the American public have a long memory,

Especially when its time to VOTE!

[dawnie51]

15. Hopefully...

these clips and interviews are being formed into commercials as we speak. There is ample quantity of these guys admitting to their maleficence out there. They have been proud of it and wanted to talk about it. Now is the time to use their own idiocy against them.

[BumRushDaShow]

16. "Stupid fucks!"

Exactly.

[lastlib]

17. That neo-fascist basturd needs to be.....

drawn and quartered and hung from a lamp-post in the town square!

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

[Kablooie]

19. You can try again in January. It will be a golden opportunity for you.

to sink yourselves even lower in the public estimation.

[LiberalLovinLug]

20. and it was the Heritage Foundation's original idea!

Individual mandate that is.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-heritage-foundation-disowns-its-baby


Butler wrote a 1989 pamphlet titled A National Health System For America in collaboration with Edmund Haislmaier (then a health care policy analyst at Heritage and now a senior research fellow there—no, they didn’t fire him, either). The pamphlet is not currently available on Heritage’s Web site (it can be purchased online), but a 1989 lecture by Butler (“Assuring Affordable Healthcare For All Americans”) is, and a more readable version is available on the Web site HealthCareReform.ProCon.org.

In the lecture, Butler said:

"Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seatbelts for their own protection. Many others require anybody driving a car to have liability insurance. But neither the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement."


They are astoundingly stupid because of their blind hatred towards the black guy in the white house. They could have jumped in ahead and framed it as "It was all our idea, we don't want Single Payer because that would be communism, but the individual mandate is a GREAT idea because it sustains the private insurance industry. Its nice to see the President follow our lead.. blah blah blah..."

But no, I guess they rely on their Con supporters to engage their selective memory super powers, and based on past history, they're probably not going to be hurt much by it.

[ProSense]

21. They hate the Medicaid expansion and subsidies.

Hate 'em.

[Jamaal510]

22. Somehow, I misread the title

and thought it said "Tea Party Ringmaster".

[ProSense]

23. The Tea Party is a circus, so it's understandable.

[Scurrilous]

25. K & R