A White House meeting Wednesday night didn't appear to yield any progress as the shutdown enters day three. Plus: The GOP knives come out for Ted Cruz and Democrats finally get a Senate recruit in Montana. 
Wall Street Journal: “President Barack Obama and congressional leaders met Wednesday for the first time since the federal government shut down, emerging more than an hour later with no evidence of progress toward resolving their impasse over health care and government spending. With hundreds of thousands of federal workers on furlough for a second day, congressional officials of both parties left the White House meeting pessimistic about prospects for a speedy end to the deadlock. They made clear that neither side had made concessions.”
NBC News: “‘The president reiterated one more time tonight that he will not negotiate,’ said Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who did not take any questions after a brief statement to reporters. ‘We had a nice conversation, a light conversation, but at some point we’ve got to allow the process our founders gave us to work out,’ he added, saying that Senate Democrats should agree to a bipartisan ‘conference’ to negotiate a deal that could include major changes to President Barack Obama’s health care law.”
Washington Post: “Boehner’s unyielding position on the six-week government funding bill, which the Senate passed, is a testament to the power of that conservative bloc and a concession to its members. The insurgents are now his palace guards. The speaker’s closest allies say he cannot afford to defy those on his right flank by ending the shutdown with largely Democratic votes.”
Los Angeles Times: “As he deals with a standoff that could scramble the politics of his second term, Obama has adopted a new approach to Congress: He is keeping his distance. The shift from hands-on to arm’s-length is at the core of the White House strategy, a deliberate change made easier by the nature of the budget stalemate. Republicans are divided over the tactics that led to the first government shutdown in 17 years. Boehner is driving, but tea party conservatives are the GPS.”
Roll Call: “As the shutdown stretches on, a bloc of moderate House Republicans could be the key to reopening government. On Wednesday,” Boehner “held meetings with groups of ‘pragmatist’ lawmakers — as Michael G. Grimm, R-N.Y., described them — who want to pass a policy-rider-free continuing resolution and end the government shutdown as soon as possible. Grimm said the group was ‘spitballing some ideas’ on how to pass a CR that would fund the entire government, but he indicated that any plan would probably require a number of centrists to join Democrats in voting down a routine procedural motion in an attempt to seize control of the debate and the House floor.”
NBC News: “Arizona Sen. John McCain and other like-minded Republican senators could end up reprising roles as key deal-makers as the party seeks a final negotiated solution to the government shutdown. No clear path to ending the impasse over spending has emerged, but in one possible deal scenario — a comprehensive agreement that also solves the problem of raising the debt limit — McCain will likely play an essential role, just as he has been in past bipartisan agreements like the immigration bill that passed the Senate last June.”
Politico: “Ted Cruz faced a barrage of hostile questions Wednesday from angry GOP senators, who lashed the Texas tea party freshman for helping prompt a government shutdown crisis without a strategy to end it. At a closed-door lunch meeting in the Senate’s Mansfield Room, Republican after Republican pressed Cruz to explain how he would propose to end the bitter budget impasse with Democrats, according to senators who attended the meeting. A defensive Cruz had no clear plan to force an end to the shutdown — or explain how he would defund Obamacare, as he has demanded all along, sources said.”
Washington Post: “A core group of House Republicans elected in the tea party wave of 2010 has largely succeeded in its aim of scaling back federal spending, despite fervent opposition from President Obama and the Democratic controlled Senate….Even before the shutdown that began at midnight Monday, the tea party efforts greatly reduced the pace of federal spending. To the dismay of many Democrats and supporters of a robust federal government, the consequences of tea party efforts are likely to remain even when the shutdown ends.”
New York Times: “With Congress locked in an intractable budget dispute that kept the federal government shut down for a second day on Wednesday, Mr. Reid is not only acting as the public face of the no-compromise posture of Democrats on Capitol Hill, he is the power behind the scenes driving a hard-line strategy that the White House and Congressional Democrats are hoping will force Republicans to crack. His tactics have been unapologetically aggressive, even when measured by the fast and loose rules of engagement in a political climate so bitterly polarized.”
MONTANA: AP: “Montana Lt. Gov. John Walsh will run for the U.S. Senate in 2014, his campaign said Thursday, giving Democrats the high-profile candidate they’ve been scrambling for in a bid to keep the seat they’ve held for decades…An advance copy of the announcement said the former Montana National Guard commander is running because the nation needs more leaders with a ‘sense of duty’ to do what’s right.”
TEXAS: AP: “When Wendy Davis walks into the coliseum where she received her high school diploma on Thursday to announce a bid to become Texas governor, she will also walk onto a national stage from which she’ll call on Democrats from across the country to help finance her long-shot bid….But the question remains: In a year where Democrats risk losing control of the Senate — and with Davis’ opponent already banking $25 million — will national donors commit the resources she needs to win?”
VIRGINIA: New York Times: “With 170,000 federal employees in Virginia and 30 percent of the economy of Northern Virginia dependent on government spending, no state has more to lose from a government shutdown than this one. And the first concrete gauge of the political fallout may play out here, where a governor’s race that had been dominated by the weakness of the two candidates now seems to be focused on the question of which party will take the blame. With the election just 34 days away, the issue increasingly is raising risks for Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the Republican, who is worriedly trying to keep voters angry at Washington Republicans from taking it out on him.”
McAuliffe will unveil a TV ad today hitting Cuccinelli over the shutdown and tying him directly to Ted Cruz. Richmond’s NBC12: Cruz “will appear with Cuccinelli this weekend at the conservative Family Foundation’s annual fundraiser. Cruz will also headline a seperate fundraiser for Cuccinelli himself.”
Richmond Times Dispatch: “Cuccinelli is calling on members of Congress to decline their paychecks during the government shutdown. Cuccinelli has said he’s against a shutdown but is less definitive about whether he supports a clean spending resolution to keep it running.”
AP’s Bob Lewis: “It took Democrat Terry McAuliffe almost two weeks to affirm his support for new Environmental Protection Agency regulations on coal. Now, Republicans are counting on it to solidify support in rural Virginia for Ken Cuccinelli in a close governor’s race. McAuliffe told reporters Tuesday in northern Virginia that he supports the EPA regulations that limit carbon emissions that could come from gas- or coal-fired power plants in the future. The regulations could sharply reduce the demand for coal from mining regions such as southwestern Virginia. Cuccinelli and fellow Republicans began hammering McAuliffe across rural Virginia on Wednesday.”
