Tom Coburn: GOP will ‘fold like hotcakes’ on Obamacare
Published September 28, 2013
by Burgess Everett, Politico, September 27, 2013.
If the government shuts down on Oct. 1, the GOP will “fold like hotcakes” in the fight to defund Obamacare, Sen. Tom Coburn said Friday afternoon before a critical set of votes.
The Oklahoma Republican said that after seven or eight days of shutdown the Republicans will begin to feel the heat from their constituents over lack of services back home, like pay for members of the military. To that end, Coburn explained that Republicans will not keep the government shuttered in order to defund Obamacare.
“The only time you shut down the government is when you shut it down and refuse to open it until you accomplish what you want. But we’ll fold like hotcakes,” Coburn told reporters. “You do not take a hostage you are not going to for sure shoot. And we will not for sure shoot this hostage.”
Coburn is among the loudest critics of a strategy to use the continuing resolution as leverage to defund the healthcare law. Coburn knows a little something about shutdowns: He was a freshman in the House when the government last shut down in 1995 and 1996, which many believe left a blemish on the party in subsequent elections.
“When the pressure comes, the conflict for a politician is you want to get reelected,” Coburn said. “Shutting down the government doesn’t work.”
September 28, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Johnny Hiott says:
I certainly hope Sen. Coburn is wrong. Like the song says "You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything". That's virtually where America is today regarding our federal govt. It stands for almost total corruption. If it's immoral it's ok, if it's Christian it's not ok. It it robs the American taxpayers it's ok, if it promotes freedom it's not ok. It seems everything is backwards now days, where right is wrong and wrong is the new right. Congress needs desperatly to scrap obamacare totally and they need to remove obama from the office they should never have allowed him to obtain to begin with and they need to do it with both parties supporting it ! They took an oath, both democrat and republican, to support and defend our Constitution ! There was nothing in their oaths about supporting and defending obama or the destruction of this nation !
