Republicans have taken a great risk in refusing to pass a clean continuing resolution, according to Michael Barone, senior political analyst at The Washington Examiner.
"The Republicans have gotten themselves out on a limb, and they take some risk with public opinion and government shutdown, although the pre-shutdown polls are not quite as ominous for them as those before the 1995, '96 shutdowns," Barone told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
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"And in this case they are campaigning, or at least yelling and screaming, against something that's unpopular, which is Obamacare," he said Wednesday.
Barone, author of the new book "The Almanac of American Politics 2014," said tongue-in-cheek that James Madison, the fourth president of the United States and "father of the Constitution," is the real villain in the shutdown.
"Let's go back and blame James Madison … Madison and the 39 others wrote a Constitution that doesn't put all power into the president," he said.
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