Tim Huelskamp's change may reflect a broader move away from slash-and-burn tactics. Tea partier shifts ACA tactics

PLAINVILLE, Kan. — Reality has sunk in for one of Congress’s staunchest Obamacare opponents.

Just weeks ago, Rep. Tim Huelskamp was one of the most prominent faces of the government shutdown, privately plotting with conservatives to push House Republicans into a strategy they later came to regret.


But this week, as he wheeled through county after county, lambasting his congressional leadership and the Obama administration with equal fervor, Huelskamp is publicly admitting that a government shutdown to choke off funding for Obamacare likely isn’t in the cards when government funding runs out again in January.

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The shift may signal a broader move away from the slash-and-burn tactics favored by some of Congress’s most conservative lawmakers — and a broader recognition on the far right that the GOP is in dire need of a tactical makeover. Of course, Huelskamp still says that Obamacare must be repealed, but he adds that he’s now willing to downsize his demands and “pass something that says you can keep your plan if you like it.” President Barack Obama, appearing on NBC Thursday, apologized to Americans who lost their insurance plans.

“There will still be a push to repeal it, a push to defund it,” Huelskamp said here, speaking in a rural health center. “There was a question whether or not the leadership [was] really active in what they wanted to do in defunding that — particularly the Senate side. At the end of the day, what I think is most possible, is dealing with this issue when the president lied 29 times when he said ‘If you like your insurance plan, you can keep it.’ We now have a bunch of Democrats that say ‘Hey, I’d support that bill.’ And we might be able to get that through. And that changes a lot of things.”

A bill that would prevent Americans from losing their individual health plans through next year is expected on the House floor next week.

“It’ll solve, hopefully, some of the short-term problems,” the Kansas Republican said in a town hall here.

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In an interview this week, in the midst of a dizzying schedule of public meetings, Huelskamp all but said that he will not be able to push House Speaker John Boehner into a corner again, conceding that although he wants to figh t, he doesn’t think “John Boehner would like to fight over Obamacare during Christmastime.”

“Generally, I don’t think there’s enough during Christmastime to do that,” he said. “It depends what happens to the individual mandate. If things continue to go south on Obamacare, maybe [Republicans will] be enlivened to continue the battle.”

Huelskamp, who ran unopposed in 2012, enjoys an enviable level of support here at home that allows him wide political leeway. But his scaled-back demands caught the ear of constituents and staunch Huelskamp allies.

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“I’ve noticed it — I think they’ve backed off, they’ve surrendered,” said Jim Circle, the chairman of the Rooks County Republican Party, who said he believes Obama is against Christians and his agenda is “right out of the communist manifesto.” “The nation has one chance next year to turn the Senate. And they [Republicans] have to maintain control of the House. If they can get past Harry Reid, then they can fix it or defund it. I don’t care what they do. They shouldn’t fight a losing battle.”

But Huelskamp has other plans for battling the law, he said. Along with other conservative lawmakers, the second-term Republican is planning to sue the federal government. Because of a provision in Obamacare, lawmakers must purchase their government-subsidized health insurance from D.C’s exchange. Huelskamp said those plans include coverage for abortion, which means the government could be subsidizing such procedures.

“The exchange pays for abortion,” Huelskamp said in an interview. “Since 1977 and 1983, we’ve had pretty clear prohibitions on federal employees and abortion coverage.”

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From a swing with Huelskamp through Plainville and Hays, it doesn’t appear that he’s feeling pressure from voters to tone down his rhetoric or change his tactics. His district — nicknamed the Big First — is extremely conservative, and its clear some of his constituents would’ve supported another government shutdown, even if Huelskamp does not.

There was no detectable furor here over the 16-day lapse in government funding , which helped sink GOP approval ratings to new lows, and possibly cost Republicans the governor’s mansion in Virginia. In fact, few asked about the shutdown, instead focusing on ways to change Obamacare’s regulations and curb the law’s reach in the future. Constituents also peppered him with questions ranging from why Americans don’t crack down on Muslim immigration, how quickly the country is going broke, the National Security Agency and the status of the nation’s outdated agriculture policy.

“I predicted we’d hear nothing,” Huelskamp said in an interview. “People were directly impacted, like contractors and stuff. But at the end of the day, they’re tired of Washington.”

Huelskamp’s view is important, and grabs the ear of the far right. But it isn’t a definitive measure, by any means. The House leadership despises him —he voted against John Boehner for speaker of the House. Late last year, Republican leadership kicked him off the Budget and Agriculture committees — big blows to a fiscal conservative from the heart of farm country.

The leadership was trying to instill fear in the rebellious conservative, and show the House Republican Conference that Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy weren’t to be crossed.

Instead, that trio has helped solidify a new power paradigm on Capitol Hill. Huelskamp — along with rabble-rousers like Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan — helps dictate policy and procedure to Boehner (R-Ohio), Cantor (R-Va.) and McCarthy (R-Calif.).

Despite both being kicked off their committees, Amash and Huelskamp still have sway. Earlier this year, Amash almost passed an amendment to curb the National Security Agency’s powers. And people like Huelskamp led the party into the shutdown.

What makes Huelskamp unique is that he lives in a mostly consequence-free zone. While Amash faces the potential of a primary challenge , allies and rivals alike say Huelskamp has no Republican opposition on the horizon. The district is far too conservative for any Democrat to pose a real threat.

“If a Republican wants to challenge him he’s going to have to run to the left of him, and I don’t think you’re going to see much success seeing somebody running to the left of him,” said Kelly Arnold, the chairman of the Kansas Republican Party.

Huelskamp has no institutional power — he sits on the mostly powerless Small Business and Veterans Affairs committees, — but still influences the national debate. Through countless discussions with reporters, strategizing with Senate colleagues and with other House conservatives, he sets what many would call unachievable legislative benchmarks. It causes friction inside the Kansas delegation, and in the House Republican Conference. He then runs around his massive state setting himself up as a foil of House Republican leadership.

“There’s a lot of things more important than being in Congress,” said Huelskamp, who has been in elected office for 17 years after earning a doctorate in government at American University in D.C. “Once you get that idea in your mind, it’s pretty hard to control you. What are they going to do? Call me up and kick me off the veterans committee?”

Huelskamp plays the part of party pariah and relishes the badge. The Republican opens up town halls by showing a corkboard with a picture of his congressional identification card that reads: “your voting card, not theirs.”

“Since I was [last] in your county, I was removed from a couple of committees by Republicans,” he told a crowd on Wednesday. “I know there’s a mixture of Republicans and Democrats in the room, and we can blame everybody for all kinds of things, but it was actually Republicans who decided your congressman shouldn’t serve on the House [Agriculture] Committee, for example. Given we’re the biggest Ag district in the country, that was meant — one reason — to punish me for the way I voted. As I told the leadership both before and after, ‘I don’t work for you all, I work for the people in this room.’”

Circle, the county Republican Party leader here, shouted that his removal was a “badge of honor.”

Huelskamp says he has held 200 town halls since his 2010 election, and if this week was an example, no Republicans get spared criticism.

Asked about the state of his party, Huelskamp said his view on “the next election might be just a little bit different than Speaker John Boehner, in terms of our approach .”

“For the Republican Party’s success, I believe they need to make absolutely clear what we believe, what our fundamental values are, and fundamentally, we are a party of conservatives,” he said. “We’re not the party of a government just a little bit smaller than the other one.”

Less than 24 hours after Ken Cucinelli lost the governor’s race in Virginia, Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, was also in the crosshairs. Huelskamp said Priebus was “running around” New Jersey boosting Chris Christie “instead of helping the guy that barely lost by a few thousand votes in Virginia, who was the conservative.”

“And that, to me, doesn’t bode well for how conservatives will be treated moving forward,” Huelskamp added.

And to his 230 Republican colleagues, Huelskamp urged them to “just man up.”

Huelskamp said he sees “a big disconnect far too often between what my colleagues say when you shut the door in the Republican Conference and what I hear them saying in the media.”

“Say the same thing at home as you do in Washington,” Huelskamp told a town hall crowd of roughly 60 people in Hays. “But at the end of the day, the only way we usually make changes here in this country is at that ballot box.”

There could be a danger in all of this anti-leadership talk. Huelskamp’s is one of the biggest agriculture districts in the country, and, because he crossed leadership, it has no representation on the Agriculture Committee. Huelskamp tells constituents of his judicious work on the farm bill, but he has opposed it twice and is not at the negotiating table as a final deal is being hashed out. Some of his colleagues call him a hypocrite.

But, like most of his decisions, people here understand. Pat Hageman, a farmer from Plainville says he knows “why he voted against it.”

Circle, the GOP party chair, said “He has a reason for voting against the farm bills. I’m not sure what the reasons were, but I respect his judgement and his character.”