Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist and regular Fox News panelist Charles Krauthammer warned over the weekend that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was leading Republicans on a “suicide” mission to defund President Barack Obama’s health reform law with an attempted government shutdown.

Over the past month, Cruz has been joined Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and the Heritage Foundation in insisting that Republicans pass no continuing resolutions to fund the government unless the president agrees to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act.

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“It would be over a cliff for the GOP,” Krauthammer said on Sunday’s edition Inside Washington. “I admire the sincerity and the passion of those who don’t want to pass the budget unless you get rid of Obamacare, but it is utterly impossible in the real world. And the only thing it will do is to undo all the gains the Republicans have made over the past year, and undo their very real chances of having great successes next year.”

“I think it’s a suicide caucus, and I hope enough of them will realize that so that [House Speaker John Boehner] will have a majority, even if it’s a bare majority, to pass a continuing resolution,” he added.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg pointed out that while Obamacare was unpopular, polls showed that Americans did not support defunding the law.

“So, they don’t even have that going for them,” Totenberg observed. “This would be a suicide mission, I think, for Republicans.”

In a July, Cruz’ chief of staff accused Republicans who did not want to shut down the government in order to defund Obamacare of being part of the “surrender caucus.” But Cruz later told radio host Laura Ingraham that he had personally “not said an ill word about any of my colleagues.”

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Watch the video below from WJLA, broadcast Sept. 15, 2013.

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(h/t: Mofo Politics)