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Is Ted Cruz No Longer a Viable Presidential Candidate?

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Jonathan Bernstein: “It’s one thing to have a reputation as a loudmouth; it’s quite another to have a reputation as a loser. That’s what the shutdown fight has done to Cruz. Among true believers he’ll be the one who was a leader in a fight that surely would have won if the squishes hadn’t sold them out. But for most party actors, including many sympathetic to Tea Partyism, he’s going to be the guy who ran up the wrong hill.”

Daniel Larison: “What may hurt Cruz’s prospects as a presidential candidate most is the fact that he will not or cannot acknowledge that he was wrong in promoting his failed strategy. As if to prove how oblivious to political reality he is, he was at it again today in his speech this morning.”


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Can Democrats Resist Their Political Instinct?

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Matt Taibbi: “The modern Democrats may be morally suspect cynics who have failed the country on issue after issue, from the NSA to torture abroad to their refusal to fight corruption in the financial markets. But politically, they are not stupid. They surely see that there is no immediate political downside to letting Cruz play this out. Polls show the Republican Party approval rating has already dropped ten points, from 38 percent to an all-time low of 28 percent, and will only go lower from here unless disaster is avoided.”

“But the Democrats have to be big enough to resist the temptation to let the Republicans destroy themselves. They should be bringing every conceivable kind of pressure to save Cruz from himself and educate the public about the dramatic consequences of a default.”

GOP Offers New Plan But No Agreement Yet

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House Republicans “are offering to pass legislation to avert a default and end the 11-day partial government shutdown as part of a framework that would include cuts in benefit programs,” the AP reports.

“Republicans also seek changes in the three-year-old health care law known as Obamacare as part of an end to an impasse that has roiled financial markets and idled 350,000 federal workers.”

A Senate Democratic leadership aide tells Greg Sargent that Democrats “aren’t prepared to comment directly on the House GOP offer — because details involving things such as duration are unclear — but reiterated to me that the general framework underlying the offer is still not acceptable.”

Meanwhile, National Review reports House Republicans have scheduled a closed-door conference meeting for tomorrow morning.

Quote of the Day

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“They’re talking about extending the debt ceiling for two months or six weeks — please. We do not believe a six-week delay of a catastrophic default is enough time to give the economy the confidence it needs.”

— Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), quoted by The Hill, rejecting the GOP proposal to extend the nation’s debt limit.

Shutdown Backfires on Republicans

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First Read: “Here are maybe the most worrisome numbers for the GOP in our poll: After the shutdown, the health-care law has become MORE popular, and a majority believes the government should be doing MORE. Per the poll, 38% see the health-care law as a good idea, versus 43% who see it as a bad idea — up from 31% good idea, 44% bad idea last month… And by a 52%-to-44% margin, respondents believe the government should do more to solve problems. Back in June, the public was split, 48% to 48%, on whether the government should do more or less.”

Said GOP pollster Bill McInturff: “That is an ideological boomerang. As the debate has been going on, if there is a break, there is a break against the Republican position.”

Speaker In Name Only

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Ron Brownstein:
“Embattled throughout his nearly three-year tenure, Boehner has never
seemed more a SINO–that’s Speaker In Name Only–than during this crisis.
He’s allowed the House Republicans’ most conservative members to
repeatedly escalate the confrontation despite his doubts about their
strategy, if that word applies. At times lately, Boehner has hinted he
might isolate the Right by building a coalition of Democrats and more
pragmatic Republicans before allowing the federal government to default
on its debts. But, so far, he’s effectively thrown up his hands and
surrendered the wheel to the Right’s insatiable demand for collision.”

Saving Face

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Charlie Cook:
“Too many Democrats seem to be enjoying this debacle, appearing to view
the fight as a terrific political opportunity to inflict some real
damage on the Republican Party. It certainly looks as if Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, a boxer in his early years, thinks he has his foot
on the throat of House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP and is not
interested in taking it off.”

“Somehow, though, Obama and congressional
Democrats have to give Republicans, at least the ones who want to
resolve this–and I would put Boehner in that category, regardless of
what he has said in recent days–a place to land, some way to get to
yes.”

Southern Discomfort

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“The Tea Party-inspired drive to derail Obamacare is anchored in a place where opposition to the federal government is as old as the nation: the American South,” Bloomberg reports.

“The current fight, a budget standoff that threatens the creditworthiness of the U.S, has vestiges of the secession from the union that started in South Carolina and led to the Civil War. It carries echoes of the nullification crisis over tariffs in the 1830s and the so-called ‘massive resistance’ movement to oppose desegregation of public schools in the 1950s.”

“In each of those fights, led by Democrats who then dominated the region, Southerners said they were overrun by Northerners hostile to their culture in ways that undermined their freedom. Now, their forebears are Republicans and, while the region’s prevailing party affiliation has changed, the basic orthodoxy has remained.”

GOP Establishment Strikes Back

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“From county chairmen to national party luminaries, veteran Republicans across the country are accusing tea party lawmakers of staining the GOP with their refusal to bend in the budget impasse in Washington,” the AP reports.

“The Republican establishment also is signaling a willingness to strike back at the tea party in next fall’s elections.”

About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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