Mitch McConnell Really, Really, REALLY Doesn’t Want Another Shutdown

As I noted yesterday, Harry Reid’s negotiating position for the upcoming budget conference and debt limit deals in January and February is rather strong because no sane Republican is going to want to go through another shutdown during an election year.

Right on cue, Mitch McConnell, who has spent far too much of his time trying to rein in freshman Tea Party twits like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz, moves one more time to send the lads back to the kiddie table. Seems that idiots in both houses, including Cruz, are still hell-bent on inflicting more damage on the country and on the GOP by jonesing for another shutdown, and McConnell has stepped forward to shut them up:

The day after Congress voted to end the government shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared there would be no repeat of the shutdown that he didn’t want in the first place. “A government shutdown is off the table,” McConnell told The National Review. “We’re not going to do it.” In raising the debt limit and opening the government on Wednesday night, Congress set December 13 as the deadline for Democrats and Republicans to come to a budget agreement. Government funding runs out January 15. But those deadlines won’t bring another crisis, he said. 

McConnell didn’t mention Sen. Ted Cruz, who led the shutdown-the-government-to-defund-Obamacare fight. In fact, when National Review‘s Robert Costa asked about Cruz, McConnell “had no comment–at all. Stone-faced.” But McConnell’s comments are pretty clear criticism of Cruz’s actions. “I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is,” McConnell told The Hill. (Cruz was elected last year.)

The US Chamber of Commerce agrees, which is why they’re backing Boehner against any possible primary challengers and also investigating running primary candidates against the more obnoxious Tea Partiers in Congress.

Greg Dworkin and David “Kagro” Waldman, at around 32:00 into the “Kagro in the Morning” podcast this morning, bring up another reason why Shutdown 2: Electric Boogaloo won’t happen, namely that the events of the past month have made it clear that the GOP, especially in the House, is in the midst of a civil war that has done great damage to the party.