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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