This blog is still on board with the defund-it approach

Yes, I'm aware of the dismissive tone O'Reilly took on his Fox show last night, the condescension he displayed to his Tea Party Express guest, and his touting of Karl Rove's WSJ column.  Yes, I'm aware of David Freddoso's column this morning arguing that the defund-it approach is unmitigatedly harmful to Pubs.

Not buying it.  Here's a roundup of arguments by folks who speak for me:

Hugh Hewitt at Townhall:

Cruz and his fellow gifted rhetoricians Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have all inveighed against Obamacare consistently and for months. They have a plan to keep the fiasco that is Obamacare front and center of the American people, and they are working the plan. They are building a movement, not a dance card, in D.C.

The House Republican leadership would have mostly preferred to fade the issue, hoping that events would break their way or at least resolve in some sort of bipartisan consensus.

Events broke their way only in the fact that this disaster of a president was revealed to the world by Vladimir Putin as a bumbling, stumbling incompetent that only the Beltway GOP could not flank.

This president won't stand up to Assad or Putin, but he will bully Beltway Republicans. That's what he does. It is the only thing he has done well in the past five years.

But the four aces of the GOP in the Senate won't be intimidated and won't be bullied, even when their colleague John McCain calls them "whacko birds."

Cruz and his colleagues rallied hundreds of thousands of voters to sign on to the effort to defund Obamacare. That's called building a network that can be mobilized in future elections. That's called playing to win, now and in 2014 and 2016.

Mark Davis at Townhall:

So why even try this? Won’t it freak people out? Won’t the media hate us? Won’t some voters call us obstructionists?

Yes, yes and yes. So let’s do it.

After decades of inconsistent conservative leadership, there are finally people in office with the guts to take bold stands unseen since Reagan-- maybe unseen since Goldwater.

After endless years of half-measures and middling efforts, unapologetically muscular conservatism is going to cause some alarm. It will startle Democrats, who have long enjoyed rolling a Republican party that’s been there to be had, and it will positively terrify establishment Republicans, who see that their conservative batting averages are suddenly insufficient.

As for the media, I could not possibly care less what they think. Are we really going to plot strategy so as not to draw fire from liberal network anchors and faux conservative pundits currying favor at Georgetown parties?

Shrinking from what conservatism requires because we fear negative media reaction is like guiding foreign policy to avoid making terrorists mad. In both cases, guess what? They already hate us. We should do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may.

While we can, and should, tell the media where to take a walk, we do actually have to care about voters. But again, operating from a foundation of fear is completely wrong.

Rather than lose sleep over what independents will think of a government shutdown, let us march forward with votes in both congressional chambers, telling President Obama, every Democrat and every voter that Obamacare is an unprecedented scourge that requires the strongest negative response.

Andrew McCarthy at PJ Media:

The objections to the defunding strategy are as unconvincing as they are feckless. Naysayers argue that President Obama will never sign a bill to fund government operations that slashes his signature achievement. Thus, the argument goes, defunding can only result in a government shutdown for which, thanks to Obama’s slavish media, Republicans will be blamed. Also trotted out, of course, is the bromide the GOP establishment chants to rationalize its supine posture whenever opportunities arise to oppose Obama’s hard Left agenda: “We only control one-half of one-third of the government, so we cannot dictate policy.”

Resistance is futile, in other words, so why resist at all? It’s an ironic argument since it seems Republican leadership only resists when doing so is futile, when the resistance is token. Thus the prior votes to repeal Obamacare, all forty of them, taken in the comfortable knowledge that they had no chance of succeeding – just going through the motions in faux fulfillment of a commitment to the base to work tirelessly to undo the law. But when something might not be futile – when it could actually work, and therefore entails hard work and risk – we generally find leadership in folderoo mode, babbling its one-half-of-one-third mantra.

Defunding could work for several reasons. First it puts the lie to the one-half-of-one-third blather. The United States Constitution does not set up government by percentage; it sets up government by enumerated power. The capacity of the respective branches to shape policy is not a function of how many of the branches a political party controls and by how much. It is a function of the subject matter of the policy in question. The president is only one-third of the government, but he is commander-in-chief, and if the issue is war strategy, he has policy primacy – it is immaterial whether the opposition party has a lock on Congress and the courts. Similarly, if the issue is adjudication of a constitutional case, it matters not whether we have a Republican president and 535 Republicans in Congress – the tune can be called by five left-wing Democrats in robes (or roughly one-half of one-third of the government).

When it comes to spending, Congress has primacy, and pride of place rests with the House (the one-half of one-third Republicans control) because the Constitution mandates that spending bills originate in the lower chamber – the one closest to the people. Equally important, the hard jobs in government are the ones where an officeholder has to do something. It is a lot easier when all that’s necessary is to refuse to act. Spending requires a positive act by Congress – not a thin dime may be spent unless Congress approves. That is, there can be no spending on Obamacare unless Congress votes to approve it. Thus, the one-half-of-one-third crowd is in the driver’s seat. All they need to do is say, “No.” It is President Obama who needs action here – congressional Republicans need only decline to act.

And by the way, if Republicans do act, if they vote to fund Obamacare, then they are for Obamacare. Don’t let them fool you with meaningless “repeal” votes. Repeal – i.e., changing the law – is a positive act; unlike refusing to spend money, it cannot be accomplished simply by saying no.

William Sullivan at The American Thinker:

This is an "undoubtedly risky" strategy, says Fox News.  Obama and Reid have "warned Republicans not to go down that road, suggesting they will bear the brunt of blame if the gambit results in government shutdown." Yes, yes, we've heard it before.  If Republicans don't consent to raising the limit on the national credit card, the world will end and all that.  But then, Republicans are willing to raise the limit under certain conditions, aren't they?  So why a government shutdown would be singularly Republicans' fault in this particular instance is a bit of a mystery.  Allowing the government to shut down because of ideological conviction against the health care bill isn't really at all different from allowing the government to shut down because of the left's ideological conviction in favor of it.But all this fanciful and formulaic rhetoric we are hearing from Democrats aside, why might conservatives deride such efforts to defund ObamaCare, and prefer the path of "compromise"?  It's ObamaCare, after all.  Securing representatives that would fight it tooth and nail was what the culling of Democrats in 2010 was all about.

[snip]

Does that mean there is no value in taking up the fight?  Sometimes, fighting a losing battle based on principle and in selfless dedication to what is right -- and being seen doing it, à la Ted Cruz -- can be rousing for a political cause.

And if Krauthammer is also right in his hopeful prediction that ObamaCare will be crushed by its own immense size and economically destructive makeup, what harm is there, then, in being among the voices that have been heralding that horrible outcome while fighting to protect Americans from it?  Wouldn't Republicans then have more credibility with the American people for having done so?

I think they would.  But the real reason ObamaCare must be fought at every turn is that Krauthammer is probably wrong.  Not about it being an unwinnable battle -- it may very well be.  But if history is any measure, he's probably wrongfully optimistic about ObamaCare's potential to be reversed after its continued implementation. 

Sullivan's real money line is this:  "Time normalizes even the most malignant social entitlement program."  The more aspects of FHer-care that are implemented, the more its permanence is assured.

And we'll upend heaven and earth before we let that happen.