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House conservatives conjured a familiar bogeyman Wednesday to explain their imminent surrender in the government shutdown fight: the liberal media.

Their tactics weren’t to blame. Division with the House GOP conference doesn’t account for it. They didn’t overreach in aiming to dismantle Obamacare. Rather, it was the press that failed to communicate their message to the American people — or blatantly misled them.

At a Wednesday briefing, a collection of House conservatives effectively called the attending reporters liars.

YOU GUYS IN THE MEDIA CONTINUED REPORTING THAT WHAT THE CONSERVATIVES WERE ASKING FOR WAS THE FULL REPEAL OF OBAMACARE THAT’S ABSOLUTELY FALSE!!!!!!!!11TY” said Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID), a member of the Republican Study Committee and the point person during the Wednesday briefing.

“We never asked for a full repeal of Obamacare because we can’t get that,” he said. “We have voted on a full repeal of Obamacare that the Senate has rejected every single time. But what we were asking for, our position from the beginning, was exchanging a one-year CR for a one-year delay of Obamacare. That was something we thought both sides were giving on something.”

House Republicans started the shutdown showdown with a move to defund Obamacare in its entirety — an effective repeal. When that failed, they pushed for a one-year delay of the law. The lower chamber has also voted separately more than 40 times to repeal part or all of the law. But the House conservatives insisted Wednesday that they always preferred the delay strategy over defund in the shutdown fight.

More: ‘Lying to the American People’: House Conservatives Blame Press for Shutdown Surrender