A Republican congressman drew parallels between the government shutdown and one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, saying Thursday that the GOP has “found itself embroiled in battle on a battlefield it didn’t intend to be on.”
The unnamed representative made the comment to the Washington Examiner’s Byron York.
“I would liken this a little bit to Gettysburg, where a Confederate unit went looking for shoes and stumbled into Union cavalry, and all of a sudden found itself embroiled in battle on a battlefield it didn’t intend to be on, and everybody just kept feeding troops into it,” the congressman said. “That’s basically what’s happening now in a political sense. This isn’t exactly the fight I think Republicans wanted to have, certainly that the leadership wanted to have, but it’s the fight that’s here.”
There are growing signs of Republican disenchantment with the current budget battle. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), perhaps the most visible leader of the push to defund the health care law that led to the shutdown, was reportedly berated by GOP colleagues during a closed-door meeting last week.
