UPDATE: Republican Congressman Says ‘This Shutdown Disaster Is Ted Cruz’s Fault’ Along With ‘30 or 40′ Birthers
Long Island, New York Congressman Peter King, a conservative Republican, is blaming it all on Ted Cruz. On Fox News, King blamed the shutdown on “Cruz and his acolytes in the House.”
King decried the “madness” in the Republican party that would push many of its members to fight against a law legally passed, upheld, and “ratified in a national election.”
Gretchen Carlson asked what the Republicans can do to unify, since the media is completely focused on the shutdown and GOP infighting as opposed to Obamacare. King used the opportunity to explain who he blames for the shutdown in the first place.
“That’s Ted Cruz’s fault. Ted Cruz led us down this path. This was a disaster from the start, I could have predicted this, and this is what the leadership predicted three weeks ago when they said they would never pursue defunding because it was going to work against us and we’d be blamed.”
UPDATE: And on MSNBC, King also called out the House “birthers”:
MATTHEWS: I’ve had members, they know who they are, they say — ‘I really can’t say with these lips that this man, Barack Obama, was elected president.’ They choke on that. How many are there in Congress on your side that represent that rejectionist front? […]
KING: I would say there are probably 30 or 40 who are like that. As there were a number of Democrats who felt that way about George W. Bush, and going back to when you and I first met, Republicans who felt that way about Bill Clinton… This is a very dangerous aspect to our government… The fact that we have people who are willing to demonize the president of the United States because he’s from a different party… and now, obviously, with President Obama, it’s definitely there.
