That uneasy feeling some pols have in the pits of their stomachs? It’s the prospect of another government shutdown at the end of the fiscal year, in part over Planned Parenthood funding, and not a little bit because of presidential politics:
The Texas senator, now a Republican presidential candidate, is rallying the faithful behind the same strategy as led to a two-week hiatus of government services in October 2013, when he led the party in holding up a government funding bill in a quixotic attempt to strip money for Obamacare. This time, Cruz is using the same Sept. 30 funding deadline to push for stripping Planned Parenthood’s $500 million in annual federal dollars. The women’s health care provider has become the bête noire of the right after undercover videos surfaced this summer of group officials discussing the cost of aborted fetal tissue.
The resurrected strategy puts Cruz’s fellow presidential contenders in a pickle. It is discomfiting to Republican leaders who have been down this road before and fully expect it to end in failure, as it did with the Affordable Care Act, as well as damage the party’s image going into an election year where Republicans are defending 24 Senate seats along with their Senate majority.
It should be a barrel of laughs.
And it should also send a shiver through the hearts of Virginia Republicans running in this November’s General Assembly races. The shutdown in 2013, which coincided with Ken Cucinelli’s run for the governor’s mansion, sucked all the attention and oxygen out of the political discussion. Cuccinelli admitted it affected his campaign, because shutdowns send many of those government workers in Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads and elsewhere in fed-dependent Virginia home.
Would a replay trickle down to the legislative races? Very hard to say. The 2015 contests have been largely quiet since the raucous June primaries. House and Senate races are generally decided on local issues, and the occasional big item, such as a tax hike.
But national politics increasingly drives the Virginia narrative. The Medicaid fights, redistricting lawsuits, Virginia’s status as a presidential swing state, Terry McAuliffe’s national footprint…the days of low key legislative contests are, if not over, then definitely on their last legs.
If Congress shuts the federal government down, it becomes an issue this November. Perhaps even a decisive one in those Senate races where federal employees and contractors are a key part of the electorate.
