ABANDON HOPE: If House Republicans have anything to say about it.

  • ABANDON HOPE: If House Republicans have anything to say about it.

I was struck last night and again this morning by the lead on the New York Times’ account of House Republicans’ implacable strategy — to vote again and again against the Affordable Care Act and to otherwise insist on enormous budget cuts, with the option perhaps being a government shutdown.

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Congressional Republicans are moving to gut many of President Obama’s top priorities with the sharpest spending cuts in a generation and a new push to hold government financing hostage unless the president’s signature health care law is stripped of money this fall.

My question: Is single-minded obstructionism against government spending in a time of modest recovery a political winner? I’d hope not. But, particularly in Arkansas, it’s not a given.

Too extreme? Too extreme for Arkansas? I think that’s almost certainly one of the key themes of the expected Senate race between the Club for Growth’s aide de camp Tom Cotton and incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor.

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But really. Is this the kind of consensus government most Americans want?

Rep. Harold Rogers, the Kentucky Republican who leads the House Appropriations Committee, outlining the Republican view of President Obama’s proposals, from environmental protection to public broadcasting:

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“His priorities are going nowhere.”

The U.S. didn’t elect the House Republican majority president in 2012. They think they were elected pope.

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