Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pledged that there will be no shutdowns on his watch, but Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)—a leading force behind the effort to defund ObamaCare in 2013—is stirring the pot with talk of action. “I believe we should use every and any procedural tool available to defund Planned Parenthood,” Cruz, who is running for president, told reporters before Monday’s 53-46 vote on defunding.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's attempt to mollify the hardliners in his conference—namely presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul—with Monday's vote to defund Planned Parenthood has already proven futile. Now the issue won't go away and it's creating even bigger fissures between Republicans. Next stop, shutdown And here's something fun. Both Cruz and Marco Rubio (yet another presidential candidate) insist that the American public will only blame the Democrats for a shutdown. "I think the question you should be asking is of the Democrats," says Rubio. "Are you willing to shut down the government in order to defend Planned Parenthood as opposed to us being asked that way?" Good luck with that, Marco.

Meanwhile, it's deja vu all over again for plenty of other Republicans. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who voted with the majority of Republicans Monday on the defunding bill, has teamed up with Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) to find some alternative way to beat up Planned Parenthood without a shutdown. Kirk is one of the most vulnerable Republicans up for re-election next year. He was the lone Republican vote against cloture and he sure as hell doesn't want to have to face women in Illinois after his party shuts down government over their health care. Other Republicans just see it as a really bad idea. Even hardline conservative Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) sees it as futile and damaging, saying "unless someone can convince me that tactic will cause the president to do a 180, we’re just gonna end up with the same results as last time."

All the same, this fight isn't going to go away, however much Republicans not running for president might want it to. Sen. Majority Whip John Cornyn promises as much, though he is somehow operating under the delusion that leadership can put the shutdown genie back in the bottle. "I realize some people want to write this is going to be shutdown material … It's not," he told Politico, then added "[b]ut we're serious about it." In other words, shutdown with a War on Women twist, here we come. Because that always works out so well for Republicans.