President Obama emerged Wednesday night as the victor after the government voted to end a 16-day government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling through Feb. 7, Bob Woodward said Thursday.
“The real winner is President Obama. He comes out as the guy who wouldn’t budge, the guy who was tough,” the Washington Post‘s veteran journalist said on Morning Joe. “This time he showed a real toughness.”
But one of the questions that remains is how he will use the strength to move the country forward during his second term, he added.
The president wants immigration reform more than anything else, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said. A large percentage of the Republican party–the economic conservatives–supports Obama’s immigration reform, which contrasts their disfavorable opinion of the recently rolled out Obamacare. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas filibustered the health care plan for more than 21 hours last month.
“I think the whole Republican Senate is different now. I don’t think Ted Cruz will recover so quickly. I think the Tea Party and Ted Cruz have peaked,” Schumer said on the show, adding that the country will see a more mainstream Republican party emerge because they “won’t go along any longer as easily as they did” with the other GOP members.
“I don’t think the ends justify the means; I don’t think the public believes that anymore,” Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, said on the show. “I think we’re not out of the woods.”
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Michele Richinick