The conventional wisdom is wrong. The mainstream media — and their parrots in the Republican establishment — are claiming that President Obama decisively won the government shutdown battle. In fact, the narrative being peddled is that the GOP brand has been badly damaged, paving the way for a possible Democratic Party takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2014 elections. This is puerile nonsense. Tea Party Republicans, led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, may have lost the battle, but they are poised for a major victory in the larger Obamacare war.
Liberal pundits and Republican moderates, such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, are blaming one person for the partial government shutdown: Mr. Cruz. They argue that for all their attempts to defund or delay Obamacare, Mr. Cruz and his conservative allies accomplished nothing. The final deal reopens the federal government until Jan. 15 and lifts the debt ceiling into early February. In exchange, no significant reforms or revisions were made to Mr. Obama’s signature health law. As for the repeal of the medical devices tax, a one-year delay in the individual mandate and an end to the exemption given to Congress and its staff, none of these proposals were accepted by the Democrats. Hence, the political and media class are convinced Mr. Cruz’s obstructionist tactics backfired, fostering the public perception that “right-wing extremists” have hijacked the GOP. Mr. Obama now openly refers to the Tea Party as a “dangerous faction.”
This is myth and propaganda masquerading as analysis. The legislative deal simply does one thing: kick the can down the road. Yet the same, enduring problems remain — the very problems identified by Mr. Cruz and Tea Party Republicans. America is sitting on a ticking debt bomb, Obamacare — the most destructive law in modern memory — is a disaster, and our ruling elites are incapable of reining in out-of-control public spending.
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