In an interview with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” yesterday, Rep. John Fleming, R-La., berated the House GOP leadership for allowing a vote on a clean bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which passed with the votes of every House Democrats and a minority of Republicans.
“Republican leadership, and really many Republicans in general, they — I don’t agree with them — are in sort of a Stockholm syndrome that whenever there is any discussion about a government shutdown, which is what’s going to happen when we cut funding and the president disagrees because the president feels like it gives him strength and the Democrats are on board, they stick together like glue, and so Republicans now have been conditioned,” Fleming told Perkins. “And the media is the first to jump out there, even the Republican pundits, to say, ‘Well look, you can do whatever you want to fight back against the president but you can’t shut government down.’”
“Once that narrative gets out there, it’s really all over,” Fleming said. “There just isn’t a pathway of success.”
He lamented that “many Americans say we should defund things but don’t shut down government, they don’t really understand that it’s one in the same.”
