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Republicans are getting pummeled in the messaging wars amid an escalating standoff over Homeland Security funding.

In interviews with The Hill, centrist Republicans are conceding that their party not the Democrats will be blamed if the critical agency shuts down at the end of the month.

If that were to happen, it would echo the Ted Cruz-led government shutdown of 2013 and the Newt Gingrich-led shutdowns of the 1990s, all of which turned public opinion against the GOP.

House and Senate Republicans are openly divided over a strategy to fund DHS, a fissure that has produced a round of intraparty fingerpointing at a time when GOP leaders are trying to prove they can govern.

The shutdown threat also comes during a period of heightened security concerns. Recent weeks have been dominated by headlines about killings and terrorist attacks by Islamic State extremists, including one Friday at an Iraqi base where U.S. Marines were training.

Meanwhile, Democrats are presenting a united front, calling for a so-called clean DHS funding bill free of any controversial GOP riders targeting President Obamas executive immigration actions.

More likely Republicans will be blamed. We control the House and the Senate, former Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (R-N.Y.) told The Hill on Friday. Americans know that we caused the last government shutdown, so we have the lasting specter of Ted Cruz hanging over us, he added.

Especially in New York, youre reading about ISIS, about Paris, reading about beheadings and people burned to death, and our response is to shut down Homeland Security? asked King, who lost more than 100 constituents in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Other Republicans have fresh memories of how the GOPs popularity plunged in the fall of 2013 after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) rallied conservatives to shut down the federal government for 16 days in a failed bid to defund Obamacare.

Everytime the Republicans think our strategy is gonna work out politically and the president will be seen as the one who has stopped the workings of government, it has not worked that well for us and we have been the ones to blame, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said. So Im optimistic in these coming days that we can find a way forward.

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Republicans: We will get blamed for DHS shutdown

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But even as GOP leaders try to shift the blame to Democrats, some Republicans are starting to break ranks with their leaders' strategy.

House Speaker John Boehner, pressed Thursday if he'd guarantee DHS wouldn't be shut down, sidestepped the question, and instead repeated his mantra: The House had done its job.

READ: Boehner tells Senate Democrats to 'get off their ass'

"We've passed a bill to fund the department and stop the President's unilateral action with regard to immigration," Boehner said in his weekly press conference.

But action is stalled on that bill.

It's "stuck," according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has failed on three attempts to attract enough Senate Democrats to agree to bring the measure up for debate in that chamber. Democrats are unhappy House Republicans attached several controversial amendments to the bill that would block President Barack Obama's immigration policies. Democrats are insisting they will support only a "clean" funding bill, without the immigration provisions.

McConnell attempted to flip the ball back in Boehner's court earlier this week, but Boehner made it clear he wants to keep the pressure on the Senate.

While Boehner and McConnell appeared to point fingers at one another earlier this week, they are now coalescing around a common strategy: pin the blame on a group of roughly seven Senate Democrats who criticized the President's decision last fall to unilaterally stop the deportations of roughly 5 million undocumented workers who entered the U.S. illegally.

"If funding for Homeland Security lapses, Washington Democrats are going to bear the responsibility," Boehner said.

West Virginia Democratic Sen Joe Manchin, who admitted he disagreed with the President's immigration actions, told reporters he strongly opposes adding the GOP immigration amendments to the DHS bill and he plans to hold firmly against it.

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Republicans struggle to avoid Homeland Security shutdown

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