In 2010, Republicans took the House of Representatives by gaining 63 seats. They also picked up six U.S. senators and 675 state legislators, giving them control of more legislative chambers than any time since 1928. The GOP also won 25 of 40 gubernatorial races in 2009 and 2010. 
 
 These epic gains happened primarily because independents voted Republican. In 2010, 56% of independents voted for GOP congressional candidates, up from 43% in 2008 and 39% in 2006. 
 
 Today, independents look more like Republicans than Democrats, especially when it comes to health care. In a new Crossroads GPS health-care policy survey conducted in 10 states likely to have competitive Senate races and in House districts that lean Republican or are swing seats, 60% of independents oppose President Obama's Affordable Care Act. If this holds through 2014, then Republicans should receive another big boost in the midterms. 
 
 There is, however, one issue on which independents disagree with Republicans: using the threat of a government shutdown to defund ObamaCare. By 58% to 30% in the GPS poll, they oppose defunding ObamaCare if that risks even a temporary shutdown. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Reuters A billboard on in New York advertising the defunding of Obamacare. 
 
 This may be because it is (understandably) hard to see the endgame of the defund strategy. House Republicans could pass a bill that funds the government while killing all ObamaCare spending. But the Democratic Senate could just amend the measure to restore funding and send it back to the House. What then? Even the defund strategy's authors say they don't want a government shutdown. But their approach means we'll get one. 
 
 After all, avoiding a shutdown would require, first, at least five Senate Democrats voting to defund ObamaCare. But not a single Senate Democrat says he'll do that, and there is no prospect of winning one over. 
 
 Second, assuming enough Senate Democrats materialize to defund ObamaCare, the measure faces a presidential veto. Republicans would need 54 House Democrats and 21 Senate Democrats to vote to override the president's veto. No sentient being believes that will happen. 
 
 So what would the public reaction be to a shutdown? Some observers point to the 1995 shutdown, saying the GOP didn't suffer much in the 1996 election. They are partially correct: Republicans did pick up two Senate seats in 1996. But the GOP also lost three House seats, seven of the 11 gubernatorial races that year, a net of 53 state legislative seats and the White House. 
 
 A shutdown now would have much worse fallout than the one in 1995. Back then, seven of the government's 13 appropriations bills had been signed into law, including the two that funded the military. So most of the government was untouched by the shutdown. Many of the unfunded agencies kept operating at a reduced level for the shutdown's three weeks by using funds from past fiscal years. 
 
 But this time, no appropriations bills have been signed into law, so no discretionary spending is in place for any part of the federal government. Washington won't be able to pay military families or any other federal employee. While conscientious FBI and Border Patrol agents, prison guards, air-traffic controllers and other federal employees may keep showing up for work, they won't get paychecks, just IOUs. 
 
 The only agencies allowed to operate with unsalaried employees will be those that meet one or more of the following legal tests: They must be responding to "imminent" emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property, be funded by mandatory spending (such as Social Security), have funds from prior fiscal years that have already been obligated, or rely on the constitutional power of the president. Figuring out which agencies meet these tests will be tough, but much of the federal government will lack legal authority to function. 
 
 But won't voters be swayed by the arguments for defunding? The GPS poll tested the key arguments put forward by advocates of defunding and Mr. Obama's response. Independents went with Mr. Obama's counterpunch 57% to 35%. Voters in Senate battleground states sided with him 59% to 33%. In lean-Republican congressional districts and in swing congressional districts, Mr. Obama won by 56% to 39% and 58% to 33%, respectively. On the other hand, independents support by 51% to 42% delaying ObamaCare's mandate that individuals buy coverage or pay a fine. 
 
 The desire to strike at ObamaCare is praiseworthy. But any strategy to repeal, delay or replace the law must have a credible chance of succeeding or affecting broad public opinion positively. 
 
 The defunding strategy doesn't. Going down that road would strengthen the president while alienating independents. It is an ill-conceived tactic, and Republicans should reject it. 
 
 Mr. Rove, a former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, helped organize the political action committee American Crossroads. 
 
 A version of this article appeared September 19, 2013, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The GOP's Self-Defeating 'Defunding' Strategy. ||||| Dana Summers/Tribune Media Services 
 
 The Republicans are at loggerheads over the issue of health care. 
 
 Some, believing the party's commitment to "repeal and replace" was written in blood, advocate using the upcoming continuing resolution necessary to keep the government open to "defund" it. Others, sensing that President Obama would regard such a move as leaving him no choice but to allow the government to shut down – and it's doubtful anyway that such a measure would be approved by the Senate so that it could get to the president's desk – are taking the position that repeal cannot be accomplished in one bold stroke but must instead be done piecemeal. 
 
 Even though there is plenty of polling data showing the American people do not support Obamacare in its current form and would like to see it repealed or fundamentally altered, it is the proponents of the gradualist approach that seem to slowly be winning the argument. The reason for this is simple: They have the president on their side. 
 
 Not intentionally of course. The president still stands squarely behind his singular – perhaps even his only – legislative accomplishment of any substance. The sad fact is however that his team has made such a hash of the implementation phase of Obamacare that "delay" is already a reality. 
 
 According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the Obama administration has missed nearly half the statutory implementation deadlines – and not in the way the new kitchen is not ready on the date the contractor promised it would be. The dates that have been missed were set in law – a fact which presents an interesting problem for the White House should anyone choose to pursue it. 
 
 Nevertheless, with the administration already in the "delay" phase it seems only natural that Congress should follow along, the difference being the Democrats want to "delay" until they get it right while the Republicans want the "delay" in order to get something else. 
 
 That something else, call it a do-over, may be the Republican Study Committee's "American Health Care Reform Act," which is set to be rolled out by several GOP congressman include RSC Chairman Steve Scalise of Louisiana on Wednesday. It may also be a plan being developed by health care policy experts Peter Ferrara and John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis. Georgia Rep. Tom Price, who is also a medical doctor, also has a bill he has offered repeatedly that contains a number of pro-market-reform incentives that would improve health care in America without raising costs and without having to resort to rationing, as is inevitable under Obamacare. 
 
 It is a given that things will not remain as they are. It is highly unlikely that the new law will ever be fully implemented as its authors and the White House intended. Even Warren Buffett, the "Oracle of Omaha" and one of the president's best billionaire buddies and staunchest defenders seems to be climbing on the do-over bandwagon. 
 
 In between "delay" and "do-over," is "dismantle," taking the new law apart piece by piece in order to accelerate its collapse under its own weight. The Obamacare advocates who say the public will never go for repeal if it means losing the goodies that are being bestowed upon them are probably right. This means the opponents of the new law have to act in such a way as to force hard choices above and beyond the hard choices that reality is already hitting them with. The premium increases, layoffs, and conversion of full time jobs into part time jobs are not coincidental; they are a direct result of the costs Obamacare is already imposing on private insurance and on employers. 
 
 The government of course knows nothing about this. They have all those tax dollars to spend so they can insulate themselves from the consequences of what they are imposing on the rest of us in the outside world. Almost. The maneuvering between the White House, congressional Democrats and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to spare legislators and congressional staff the economic costs of Obamacare and the reality of the health care exchanges they have forced most of the rest of us into was too much for Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter and Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis, who have introduced legislation to block the taxpayer subsidies OPM recently okayed. 
 
 For their trouble, because they have it in mind to prevent the taxpayers from being stuck with an even bigger bill, Vitter has been viciously and unfairly attacked by his senate colleagues: 
 
 "Although Senator Vitter has happily allowed the federal government to pay for a portion of his health insurance for many, many years, as a member of the House of Representatives and as a member of the Senate, now he wants to force these 16,000 congressional workers to cover the full cost of their health insurance," Senate Majority Leader and Obamacare subsidy supporter Harry Reid said recently on the Senate floor. "With this background one must ask, if Senator Vitter opposes the employer contribution to congressional staffers, does he oppose it also for the 150 million other Americans whose employers help pay their health insurance premiums? Does he want to discourage private employers from doing the right thing and providing their employees with affordable health insurance? Is that what he wants? Just to do away with health insurance that 150 million Americans have in America? Millions, I repeat, millions and millions of employers rely on this important benefit to attract the best and brightest and hardest working people they can find." 
 
 Reid may have dressed the argument up nicely and put a bow on it but a pig is still a pig. What he's talking about is what is already happening to millions of Americans whose employers have either cannot comply or have chosen not to comply with what Obamacare requires them to do. Even the unions that make up the once all-powerful AFL-CIO are squirming under its dictates – although all they want, typically, is an exemption for their members and only their members rather than outright repeal. 
 
 In the natural order of things, "repeal and replace" is evolving into "delay, dismantle, and do over" and there is little the president can do to stop it. Sometimes the waiting is the hardest part but, in the end, it's going to all come tumbling down. 
 
 Read Robert Schlesinger: Navy Yard Shooting Reveals the NRA’s Big Gun Control Lie 
 
 Check out U.S. News Weekly, now available on iPad ||||| True, it would be a pain to repeal the whole thing if it doesn’t work out. But not a pain sufficient to wreak havoc on the global economy like, say, refusing to raise the debt ceiling . Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has been leading the push to shut down the government unless Congress repeals Obamacare. But have you ever heard him vow that if Congress doesn’t repeal Obamacare there will be ... elections and then a new Congress that will repeal Obamacare? 
 
 Actually, Ted Cruz has an answer for this. Once the law goes into effect, he told the Web site The Daily Caller, the public will be overwhelmed by its sugary sweetness — “hooked on the subsidies.” It’s the duty of Congress to take it back before people can taste it, just the way New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to whisk away high-calorie Big Gulps. 
 
 So, the message is clear. The new health care law is going to be terrible, wreaking havoc on American families, ruining their lives. And they are going to love it so much they will never have the self-control necessary to give it up. 
 
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 So the war goes on. No issue is too big to ignore in the name of Obamacare repeal. None is too small. None is too unrelated. In the Senate, the latest victim was a popular, useful bill on energy efficiency, whose happy march toward passage came screeching to a halt when a handful of Republicans tried to make it a vehicle for votes on you-know-what. 
 
 “This will be the most, the worst ...” sputtered Harry Reid , grasping for adjectives before settling on “the least productive Senate in the history of the country.” 
 
 “Least productive” was fairer than “worst.” After all, there was that session when somebody beat Senator Charles Sumner half to death with a walking stick. 
 
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 Anyway, things are ridiculously awful. 
 
 The energy efficiency bill is the legislative version of a fluffy puppy. It was co-sponsored by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio . It involves helping manufacturers save money on energy use, and creating new model building codes, making plans and cooperating and studying. Portman and Shaheen have been working on it for three years. 
 
 “Energy efficiency is something everyone can agree to,” said Shaheen in a phone interview. 
 
 Well, possibly not everybody. It’s hard to predict how the bill would fare in the House, where some people still haven’t gotten over the Bush administration’s decision to phase out incandescent light bulbs. But there were at least some signs of hope. 
 
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 And things were going great in the Senate. The bill was approved 19 to 3 in committee. When it came up for debate on the floor, nobody even attempted to offer a parliamentary motion to hold up all progress indefinitely and then require 60 votes to move forward. 
 
 “Then,” Shaheen said sadly, “Senator Vitter objected.” David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, demanded a vote on his amendment to eliminate any health care subsidies for Congress. He was followed by the minority leader, Mitch McConnell , waiving a proposal to postpone an entire piece of the law. Reid refused to allow indefinite voting on Obamacare during the energy efficiency bill debate. The fluffy puppy was caged in the basement. 
 
 You do not want to know all the details of Vitter’s motion. The original health care legislation stripped members of Congress and their staff of their traditional insurance coverage. Nobody would care if the members voted to cover themselves through policies available only on Nigerian Internet sites. But the staff is another matter. If the amendment passes, people like Congressional clerical workers would be virtually the only Americans offered every possible disadvantage and none of the advantages of health care reform . 
 
 “It’s to get them to recognize the pain that America’s about to feel,” said Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming . 
 
 Followed, of course, by delicious, addictive joy.
– House Republicans announced yesterday that they'd only vote to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling if they could repeal or delay ObamaCare with the same votes. That's got pundits talking today, and pretty much none of those people think it's a good strategy. Here's what they're saying: At the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove reveals Crossroads polling that shows that, while independent voters widely oppose ObamaCare, they oppose the GOP's repeal-or-shutdown tactics just as strongly. Rove also argues that a shutdown today "would have much worse fallout" than the 1995 shutdown, politically and otherwise. Besides, the repeal would need enough votes to clear the Senate and override a presidential veto. "No sentient being believes this will happen." Republicans who prefer gradually delaying and dismantling the law are winning the argument, argues Peter Roff at US News and World Report, and with good reason: "They have the president on their side." Obama's team "has made such a hash of the implementation phase of ObamaCare that 'delay' is already a reality," and it now seems inevitable to him that the whole law will "come tumbling down" and be replaced with something else. But some Republicans—displaying "all the rationality of a Justin Bieber fan riot"—argue that they must act quickly, before Americans taste ObamaCare's sweet, sweet subsidies. The law will be "worse than an invasion of giant zombies swinging nuclear-tipped crocodiles!" quips Gail Collins at the New York Times, and Americans "are going to love it so much they will never have the self-control necessary to give it up." It's not just bad politics, it's morally wrong, argues EJ Dionne at the Washington Post. "There is a thread running through the kamikaze caucus," he writes. "Almost everything it is doing is designed to keep government from acting against inequality." ObamaCare, which would help 25 million Americans get insurance "is part of this larger story."