No. This time it will work...
Josh Marshall laments - and rightfully so - how far down the rabbit hole we have gone as a country. The GOP has now adopted - as a routine practice - the threatening of the very operations of government and the solvency of the United States.
Think about that for a second.
They have "defined deviancy downwards" (as Marshall puts it, paraphrasing Moynahan) to the point where we tacitly accept that this is going to happen. The government is probably going to shut down - not from civil war or unrest, not from natural catastrophe, not from fiscal calamity - but because one party just thinks it should do it for shits and giggles.
No one with a functioning brain believes that Obama will sign any law that guts the Affordable Care Act, because you don't negotiate with terrorists. Does called the GOP terrorists offend our sense of decorum? OK, you don't negotiate with toddlers.
The behavior of the GOP is that of a tantrum-prone four year old. They are going to make everyone's life miserable until they get what they want. They are going to fling their sippy cups and cry and wail and read Green Eggs and Ham in the well of the Senate.
Obama tried to negotiate with them in 2011 and found them to be impossible to negotiate with, in that every concession from him led to more demands. So he's not going to do it again.
And he shouldn't.
The GOP needs to govern. They need to pass a Continuing Resolution - at levels far, far below what Democrats want - because that is almost literally the least they can do. They then need to raise the debt ceiling, because responsible adults should not destroy the global economy because they don't like losing the last two presidential elections.
Booman can see an outcome where Boehner decides to create a governing coalition of about 40 GOP reps and Democrats to do the very least possible governing: CR, debt ceiling, maybe immigration.
But that requires Boehner to have vision, strength of character and intelligence, none of which he has demonstrated so far in his time as Speaker.
We are well and truly screwed by these clowns.
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