The Ten Hardline Conservatives Pulling the Strings of the GOP Shutdown - Bill Moyers
http://billmoyers.com/2013/10/11/the-ten-hardline-conservatives-pulling-the-strings-of-the-gop-shutdown/
Much of the coverage of the government showdown has focused on a relatively small group of hardline conservatives within the Republican caucus who have backed their partys leaders into a fight they didnt want.
As Ryan Lizza noted in The New Yorker, these lawmakers mostly represent very safe, heavily Republican and disproportionately white districts that dont look much like the rest of the country. Many of those on the front lines are recent arrivals to Capitol Hill, and theyre pushing a leadership they see as having been too willing to compromise with Democrats in the past.
Its an important angle. Yet it also obscures what should be an obvious question: Since when do freshmen senators or one- or two-term reps push their congressional leadership around? Historically, its been the reverse. And since when does a newcomer to the Senate such as Ted Cruz (R-TX) have the right to tell House Republicans what to do? If theres only a relatively small group of lawmakers who think defunding the law is a dandy idea, why has every budget resolution with such a provision won more than 200 Republican votes in the House of Representatives during the showdown? Why is this supposedly silent majority of Republicans so docile? Why dont they push back?
View Interactive: Who's pulling the strings? illustrations by Joe Fournier
The answer lies in the clout wielded by an extensive web of non-governmental conservative groups supported by mountains of dark money. Those groups see the Affordable Care Act as an existential threat to their worldview and their party and have waged a multipronged campaign to kill it in its cradle. Theirs is the ultimate inside/ outside strategy: They fund primary challenges from the right by upstart candidates against incumbents they view as insufficiently pure. When those true believers get into office, these groups promote them relentlessly to the partys activist base filling their re-election coffers with donations by portraying them as courageous mavericks fighting against ossified RINOS (Republicans in Name Only). They mount public education campaigns and buy ad blitzes, and they coordinate messaging among friendly voices within the conservative media.
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Check out Bill Moyers
interactive feature "to meet some of the key people pulling the strings" who drove the Government Shutdown agenda.