How Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory

By Chris Cillizza, Published: October 1 2013

Tuesday should have been a banner day for Congressional Republicans, the day in which sequestration cuts to the federal government were locked in for another few months — a move that would have proved just how committed the GOP was to cutting federal spending and shrinking the debt.

Speaker of the House John Boehner speaks at a recent press conference at the U.S. Capitol.  (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Instead, the government is shuttered. Polling shows Republicans are in line to take the lion’s share of the blame. The party is fighting amongst itself about when and whether to make a deal. Party strategists are (semi) openly fretting about the political danger their side is courting with the shutdown.

“When is a win not a win?,” asked former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis (R). “When it belongs to the GOP. These are constant self-inflicted wounds. We don’t need to learn how to be a good loser. We need to learn to be a good winner.”

How the heck did the party turn what could have (and should have) been a clear political win affirming their baseline commitment to shrinking government and reducing spending into what looks like a political quagmire from which they might struggle to extricate themselves?

The answer is simple — yet complex. And it can be summed in one sentence. The Republican party base — and cast-iron conservatives in Congress — loathe Obamacare.

Remember back a few weeks ago when Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor floated a proposal that would have allowed House Republicans to vote to defund Obamacare and fund the government, but also allowed for Senate Democrats to strip the defund language and send the continuing budget resolution to President Obama directly?

That proposal died before it ever got close to the House floor as cast-iron conservatives in the House — with an assist from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) — portrayed it as a “fake” attempt to defund Obamacare.

The people, Cruz insisted, wanted a real effort by Republicans to defund the law — and it was time GOP leaders in the House listened.  What Cruz meant by “people” was, really, the Republican base — which, over the past four years, has come to see the Affordable Care Act as a  symbol of everything they don’t like about Obama and his presidency.

Take a look at these numbers — broken down by party ID — on opinions about Obamacare via the Kaiser Family Foundation.