House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) brought up a “clean” bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded, essentially giving in to Obama’s executive order on immigration, reported The Huffington Post.
Although everyone knows that the GOP was holding the DHS “hostage,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said losing the fight was the GOP’s plan the entire time.
“Unfortunately, leadership’s plan was never to win this fight,” said Cruz. “Since December, the outcome has been baked in the cake. It was abundantly clear to anyone watching that leadership in both houses intended to capitulate on the fight against amnesty. It was a strategy doomed to failure. It’s an old adage in Washington: Never take a hostage you’re not prepared to shoot.”
Was this a ploy by the Republicans, or did they actually realize the damage they were about to cause by shutting down the DHS? Smart money says the latter. The GOP tried using the DHS as leverage against the Obama administration, but when they realized the White House wasn’t backing down, the GOP gave in.
Now that the GOP has buckled, Cruz is attempting damage control to make the GOP look less weak and crazy. Cruz said that the Republicans weren’t completely serious about fighting Obama on the immigration order, almost downplaying it to seem like a non-issue.
“If we had been serious about this fight, and we should have been, the continuing resolution [under which DHS funding expired in February 2015] should have focused on the EPA, or the IRS or the Department of Labor,” said Cruz to the Huffington Post. “Now, those are departments which a majority would be prepared to allow funding to temporarily expire in order to use as leverage.”
If the GOP wasn’t “serious about this fight” to begin with, then why even put up a fight? The GOP’s “capitulation” indicates their avoidance to create a partial shutdown, not the calculated strategy that Cruz says.
