Avoids shutdown push

Rubio avoids Cruz's Planned Parenthood-shutdown push

By Burgess Everett

Many of the Republican candidates on the debate stage Wednesday night joined in a full-throated endorsement of Ted Cruz's damn-the-torpedoes strategy to defund Planned Parenthood, even if it means shutting down the federal government.

But two candidates who’ll soon be casting votes on the matter were noticeably silent: Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.

“I think they’re just seeing the results of the last time we tried that,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the party’s nominee in 2008, said of a strategy similar to what Republicans tried with defunding Obamacare in 2013. “Last time was a disaster.”

When it comes to the premier congressional debate over the next two weeks, Rubio (R-Fla.) and Paul (R-Ky.) are in danger of being overshadowed by the bawdy Cruz. The Texas senator making a direct play for tea party voters is all-in: Do whatever it takes to deny Planned Parenthood its federal funding, including shuttering the government if necessary.

But the calculation for Rubio and, to a lesser extent, the fading Paul, isn’t so straightforward. Back Cruz’s play and they risk getting sullied by congressional ineptitude and looking less than presidential; oppose it and they potentially get tagged as squishy conservatives, not a good place to be four months before voting begins.

Though CNN’s moderators didn’t ask Rubio and Paul where they stood, neither injected himself into the discussion. Cruz, who devised the tactic and was the poster boy of the 2013 shutdown, found support from governors and political outsiders competing against him, and seemed to revel in the attention his effort was getting on national TV.

“Every Republican ought to step forward and honor the commitments we made when we ran for office,” Cruz said in an interview Thursday in the Capitol, when he was asked about Rubio and Paul’s silence on the matter.

If the Senate takes up a spending bill this month that defunds Planned Parenthood as GOP leaders now plan, the three senators will go likely go on record in favor of it. Paul has held several Planned Parenthood events on the Capitol grounds and Rubio has unequivocally said he wants to gut the organization's federal backing.

But there likely will be subsequent votes, right before the deadline, that will actually decide whether a shutdown happens. How Rubio and Paul vote then, and what they say in the lead-up to it, could make all the difference in whether or how they’d be associated with a federal closure that's sure to play better with conservative activists than general election voters .

Rubio and Paul have kept their distance from Cruz so far. Even though both Rubio and Paul have typically opposed short-term spending bills in the past that funded Planned Parenthood, both men have refused to sign a letter from Cruz to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowing to oppose any spending bill that funds the organization.

Senior lawmakers say that other than Cruz, anyone associated with the shutdown is likely to have his or her reputation tarnished.

“I don’t think a shutdown helps either the person or the party that’s seemed to have precipitated it,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.).

“It hurts the whole Republican brand,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas). "We need to win the election."

Rubio is in a particularly tough spot because of lingering conservative skepticism over his support for comprehensive immigration reform. But appearing like he’s tagging along with Cruz isn't ideal, either.

“Marco Rubio’s a smart guy,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who is friendly with Rubio but has endorsed Jeb Bush. “It’s smart for him to do the right thing and we all know trying to outflank people is a race to the bottom. In many ways Donald Trump has outflanked everyone. Where does that lead to? Not a good place.”

Trump, for the record, has also endorsed Cruz's tactic. The fourth GOP senator running for president, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, opposes the strategy and said in Wednesday's early debate that he's "tired of telling people things they want to hear that I know we can't do."

New Hampshire Sen. Kelley Ayotte said voters in her first-in-the-nation primary state would not reward Republicans who back a government closure over Planned Parenthood funding.

“My constituents don’t support a shutdown. That’s what I believe. And I don’t support it either,” said Ayotte, who is up for reelection in 2016 and could provide a key Republican endorsement in her state. She wrote Cruz a letter Thursday questioning how his strategy can succeed given Democrats’ leverage in the White House and Senate.

Paul and Rubio both jumped aboard the effort to defund Obamacare in 2013, but neither owned the subsequent shutdown like Cruz did. Paul and Cruz even tussled afterward over how hard the Kentucky senator fought for Cruz’s position: Paul claimed he got a thank-you note from Cruz afterward, while Cruz insisted that Paul “decided not to be with us in this fight.”

So perhaps it’s not surprising that Paul shied away from giving Cruz a pat on the back on Wednesday night. Paul's allies aren't sure how far he’s willing to go on Planned Parenthood.

“I can’t speak to his position on that, because I don’t know,” said Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who has endorsed Paul and is a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus. “Sometimes there are issues that you think are more of a priority and Sen. Paul spoke very eloquently about foreign policy and drug policy. And those are important issues to him and a lot of America.”

Paul has proposed his own strategy on Planned Parenthood. He wants two votes: One on funding the government and another on funding Planned Parenthood. The government funding bill would pass, Paul’s thinking goes, while only a minority would vote for Planned Parenthood and the organization would lose its support from Congress.

But that has gained little traction with his party. McConnell and his leadership team are actually mulling a strategy more like Cruz’s, although senior Republicans know such an effort would fail and then they would probably move on to a "clean" spending bill.

“Over and over again we see Republican leadership rolling out a plan to lose. That doesn’t make any sense,” Cruz said of the leadership’s machinations.

The debate made clear that Cruz has plenty of backing from his rivals, though, perhaps tellingly, some of the most vocal supporters of the shutdown play won't have to actually cast a vote on the issue.

A sampling: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie accused the Republican majority of “giving the president a pass.” Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina dared Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to watch the secret videos of Planned Parenthood officials allegedly discussing fetal tissue sales and then said: “If we will not stand up in and force President Obama to veto this bill, shame on us.”

Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) even nonchalantly suggested that the Senate should scrap its supermajority requirement to send a spending bill that defunds Planned Parenthood to the president, a tactic that even Cruz has frowned on because of how effectively the Republican minority used the filibuster over the past eight years to block Democratic proposals.

“They don’t work in the Senate, so they don’t get to vote,” Cornyn said of the governors.