The video clip Fox News has been replaying is a stark reminder of what Barack Obama himself called an unacceptable tactic, branding government shutdowns as “total irresponsibility” during the 2013 fight over Obamacare.
What makes the resurfaced footage combustible is timing: Democrats are now standing in the same place Obama condemned, as Washington lurches deeper into a shutdown that began at the start of October and has stretched into the following month.
Conservatives should be blunt about hypocrisy when they see it; Washington’s playbook cannot flip moral badges depending on which party holds power. The same rhetoric that once painted shutdowns as the “height of irresponsibility” has been muted when the policy aims suit the other side, and voters sense the two-tiered standard.
Let’s be clear about precedent: the 2013 closure that produced those Obama sound bites lasted 16 days and was widely decried across the political spectrum for the harm it did to ordinary Americans. That episode should have taught lawmakers a simple lesson about consequences, not offered a how-to manual for future brinksmanship.
The human and economic toll of this latest shutdown is not abstract. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been furloughed or forced to work without pay while critical data collection and services are stalled, and programs that feed vulnerable families are now on shaky footing.
Democratic leaders who applaud their own resolve while ordinary Americans lose paychecks and access to benefits are failing in basic stewardship. This is not governance; it is hostage-taking dressed up as principle, and it undermines public trust in institutions already stretched thin by mismanagement and partisan theater.
Conservatives must demand accountability and consistency: if shutdowns are “total irresponsibility” when the other side threatens them, they are total irresponsibility now. Lawmakers who shrug off the damage should be called out until the business of governing returns to the floor where real compromises are hammered out and Americans can get back to living their lives without Washington’s tantrums in the way.
