Of course they did.  And we need to keep making them kill and kill and kill and kill and kill — and show that it is they who refuse to fund the non-essential parts of the government, they who refuse to compromise, they who refuse to listen to the American people who don’t want ObamaCare and have applied enough pressure on a consistently timid GOP leadership to force its hand.

So the strategy is simple, once we discount the worries about “how this will affect Republicans politically” and start thinking about how to protect the American people from socialized medicine:  keep introducing funding measures and let the House Democrats either vote for them or kill them.  And when the kill them, make it clear it is they who have killed them — and that there’s no reason we must agree to fund ObamaCare in order to fund other parts of the government.  The two are not by nature integrally connected, and they needn’t be.

This is the case that needs to be made over and over:  the Democrats, when they call for a “clean bill”, are demanding that ObamaCare be funded or else they’ll refuse to fund the rest of the government’s non-essential services.  That is, the Democrats are refusing to compromise on an unpopular law that the people reject, and are willing to withhold all non-essential services from Americans unless they are permitted to force upon we, the people, a socialized health care scheme that not only will destroy health care quality and create economic havoc, but that funnels funds to Democratic groups in charge of implementation, the selling for the services, etc.

Which, as we saw yesterday, as exchanges were slated to open, has been a blazing model of success.

We need to put up a unified front, and any Republican strategist or pundit or politician more concerned about potential political fallout rather than principle during this fight is not worth the hot air they continue to belch out.   And that’s  because we need to move forward on the assumption that those who polling shows are not in favor of a “shutdown” to “defund ObamaCare” have been politically disengaged — and that when they learn about what it is this effort is about, not defunding government but rather protecting Americans from a health insurance law that invades their privacy, kills their jobs, drives up their costs, and reduces the quality of their care, they will move in increasing numbers on the side of principle and, as it happens, self-interest.

But they need to be awakened and they need to know what we who follow politics closely have always known:  this law represents a fundamental realignment of the relationship between government and citizen.  It creates subjects.  And gives the government the “right” to tell us we must buy what it is they are selling, as if somehow we are no longer the government, in that the consent of the governed need not apply going forward.

It is a critical fight.  Those Republicans who continue to sabotage the efforts are in effect working against the interests and will of the American people.  And they need to pay the price for that politically, economically, and publicly.

Grow some stones and hold the line.  Or else you are nothing but a speedbump in need of removal.