The Feehery Theory

Congressional Democrats Want DHS to Close

Posted on February 25, 2015

Congressional Democrats desperately want Congressional Republicans to get blamed for closing down the Department of Homeland Security, the longer the better.

So they are doing everything they can to make that happen.

They believe that a shutdown could help them to take back the Senate and possibly to take back the House.

There is no evidence that Nancy Pelosi will allow her team to bail out John Boehner even if a clean CR comes back from the Senate.  It could happen, but there is plenty of reasons to think it won’t.

Harry Reid reacted frigidly to Mitch McConnell’s perfectly reasonable proposition to vote on a clean CR and to also vote on a scaled down version of the House bill.

All McConnell has been asking for is a chance to have a debate on the House bill.   That request has been rebuffed by Senate Democrats largely because they don’t want to take a vote on any immigration provisions.

They don’t want to vote on those provisions because they don’t want their vulnerable Red State Senators (none of whom who are up in 2016) to get cross-wise with their constituents.

But they also don’t want to vote on these provisions because they want Republicans to get blamed for a government shutdown.

They want Republicans to get blamed for a government shutdown because they believe it makes Mitch McConnell look bad.

They want Republicans to get the blame because they don’t want the GOP to get any credit for making the political system work better.

They want Republicans to get the blame because they are desperate for any political advantage.

They want Republicans to get the blame because they are in the minority and in the minority, chaos works to your advantage.

I don’t think there will be a shutdown, because I think Boehner and McConnell don’t want to give Pelosi and Reid a victory on this.

Shutting down the government will hurt the Republicans more than it will hurt the Democrats.

That’s why the Democrats are doing everything they can into baiting the GOP, hoping upon hope that the right-wing does their dirty work for them.

It’s a cynical strategy.  But it just might work.

I guess in their minds it’s better than the other strategy, which is to allow the process to move forward and have the Senate actually represent the interests of the American people.