House Speaker John Boehner’s strategy collapsed. Ted Cruz’s push to use a shutdown to defund Obamacare was “not a smart play” and a “tactical error,” he said. And the country was staring at the threat of a prolonged shutdown and a potentially disastrous default on a nearly $17 trillion national debt.
Using a football analogy, McConnell said he got the ball on his own two-yard-line with a “shaky” offensive line and had to cut a last-ditch deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to end the crisis, no matter how unappealing to many in his party. Despite acting as a chief deal-maker in recent years during government crises, it was unclear the role McConnell would play until the final days of the bitter fight.
“Given the card I was dealt at that point, what I had hoped to have achieved was to punt the ball to a better place on the field without raising taxes or busting the [spending] caps,” McConnell told POLITICO in a phone interview Thursday.
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