My last column before I take a two week vacation:
The schadenfreude wore off quickly. Observing the tea party suffer a political defeat, with other Republicans like Rep. Pete King (R-NY) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) piling on, was entertaining for a solid 24 hours until the grim realization set in that this rogue faction of the GOP could very well try for a sequel — or an entire series of shutdowns.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the chief architect of the tea party shutdown and subsequent debt ceiling brinksmanship, might have lost an endorsement from his home town newspaper, but he managed to raise $1.19 million during the third quarter — nearly three times the haul of the second quarter total. That period of time didn’t include the shutdown, but it included his filibuster, which, it turns out, had a very important purpose: the make money for Ted Cruz. He also beefed up his email database with a petition that gathered over two million names and addresses.
When asked who “won” the shutdown battle, Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL) told Politico the winners were “the people that managed to raise a lot of money off this.” Now, I don’t know if that means the tea party necessarily “won,” but Cruz and the Heritage Action group, which pulled in $330,000, didn’t walk away empty-handed.
While Cruz and the others cashed-in, the shutdown ended up costing the federal government $24 billion… [CONTINUE READING]