Rep. Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee become the first possible 2012ers to call for Republicans to collect their wins and move on. Bachmann:
We must answer the bell that was rung last November when the American people called us to fight for deep cuts in spending, for the full repeal of ObamaCare, for an end to taxpayer funding of abortion, and for a government that will live within its Constitutional boundaries. Those would be the kind of large-scale fights that could change the arc of history. Unfortunately, the fight that’s happening today in Washington is not even close to being on the same scale.
Huckabee, on Fox News just now:
To quote two great government paragons, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, you can’t always get what you want. You get what you can, then you fight for the rest the next day… I’d love to Planned Parenthood just disappear, I’d love to see NPR defunded… but you’re going to put a lot of pain on people who don’t deserve the pain.
And most importantly, Sen. Tom Coburn:
It’s pretty unrealistic to think with this president thatyou’re going to get a lot of riders. That’snumber one. Number two is, what’s the greatest moral dilemma ofour day? Abortion certainly is a big one, but if we don’taddress all these other financial issues that are going tocripple those that are with us, we’ll be making a mistake.
I say Coburn’s the most important voice here because he was in Congress in 1995, and he’s often criticized Newt Gingrich over deals that were cut during the Republican Revolution. And even he’s ready to cut bait and have a bigger fight on the debt ceiling, and on the 2012 budget.
