"I hope we get some common sense": Republicans reeling from political damage caused by shutdown

In private, irritated Republican senators lashed out at each other over the 35-day shutdown — with conservative hard-liners and moderates attacking Trump’s strategy and his decision to capitulate by reopening the government without winning a dime for his border wall. Many congressional Republicans say they knew the impasse would not end well for the GOP, but went along with Trump in the name of party unity…

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“I came to the conclusion a long time ago that none of these are a good idea,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of the handful of Senate Republicans who broke from Trump and the broader party strategy. “What I have heard from our conference is a greater number of voices that are saying, ‘Hey, this does not work so well. This is not a tool that we should be using.’ ”

Yet Murkowski noted that in a party lunch on Friday, some Republican senators said they “never really felt the urgency” of the funding lapse, except perhaps when they were going through airport security.

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