Why the Democrats have made Planned Parenthood funding their hill to die on

The budget battle is not really about Planned Parenthood or cherry blossoms, in spite of what Harry Reid & co. are saying. The budget battle is really about discretionary spending and the massive national debt. Note this passage in Jazz Shaw’s latest piece for PJM.

Faced with such dizzying logic even I began to wonder if there might not be a better way for the GOP to package their proposals in a manner more palatable to America as a whole and the Democrats in Congress in particular. Of the various arguments I’d heard, particularly from more libertarian leaning friends, one was rather compelling. “Where,” they asked, “were the corresponding cuts to programs near and dear to the hearts of conservatives? Doesn’t this approach paint the Republicans as unserious on the matter of fiscal restraint? Are they only using the budget crisis as a ploy to promote their insidious social conservative agenda?”

It seemed a fair point, and as luck would have it I was scheduled to take part in a conference call on April 7 with Senators John Thune and Jeff Sessions, both members of the budget committee. I determined that I would put the question to them.

When my chance came to ask, Senator Thune didn’t miss a beat. Rather than offering a list of “conservative” spending items facing the ax or an explanation of why we shouldn’t do that, he pointed to an entirely different reason. The vast majority of discretionary spending items such as these are only allotted to programs which are part of the liberal agenda. There wasn’t much to cut by way of conservative programs, he said, because conservatives simply don’t like spending money that way.

The Democrats decided not to pass a federal budget last year precisely because they didn’t want to be on the record voting in support of the irresponsible Obama spending spree leading up to the 2010 mid-term elections. They wanted the money to keep flowing, but shirked the responsibility that went along with spending it. The Republicans all along have favored passing a budget because they actually favor cutting spending. They ran on that, and want to do it. Planned Parenthood is in the mix for all kinds of reasons, but mostly because the federal government doesn’t need to be spending money it doesn’t have on such a controversial group. If we can’t cut it, we certainly can’t make the major cuts that are needed to bring the government back on a path to fiscal sanity.

But the controversy is exactly what the Democrats want. They want a shutdown, they want it to seem like it’s over a small amount of money, and they want to be able to frame any shutdown as a radical move by the Republicans. That’s how they think they win. The PP cut gives them just the opportunity they need. In fact, it’s their only hope. Without that cut, the messaging inevitably shifts back to the Democrats’ failure to pass a budget in the first place, to President Obama’s abdication of leadership, and to the fact that their failure will leave the troops in the field without pay for some period of time. They can’t defend that, and can’t motivate their base with it either. But they can certainly rally their base around Planned Parenthood. They’re hoping that if they scream “Republicans are killing wimin!” loud enough and long enough, the noise will provide enough distraction and the media will give them cover for what really has been an abdication of responsibility by the Democrats all along. Since the PP cut is probably also dividing the GOP in the Senate, they may be right.

Mike Huckabee just signaled on Fox that he would give in on both Planned Parenthood and NPR.

Update: Hot Air has video of Huckabee’s remarks. I have to say, whatever one thinks of the shutdown itself, this is one reason I don’ t support Huck. His record and his instincts show that he would get rolled by the Democrats at just about every turn. When the going gets tough, Mike Huckabee gets going away from the fight as fast as he can.