Thursday, October 03, 2013

Why the shutdown will be so hard to end, in one perfect quote

This one quote is getting a lot of play. Ezra Klein explains, Why the shutdown will be so hard to end, in one perfect quote

"‘We’re not going to be disrespected,’ he told the Washington Examiner's David Drucker. ‘We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.’

Stutzman is right. The fight over the shutdown has become unmoored from any particular policy demands the GOP believes it can secure. It's become an issue of pride and politics. At this point, Republicans simply need something so they can tell themselves, and their base, that they didn't lose. They don't know what that something is, exactly. But it needs to be something.

By the same token, the Democrats literally can't give them anything without losing. Not until the shutdown ends, anyway. And, on CNBC on Wednesday, President Obama added that the Democrats can't give them anything until the debt ceiling is raised. 'Until we get t[the shutdown] done, until we make sure that Congress allows treasury to pay for things that Congress itself already authorized, we are not going to engage in a series of negotiations,' Obama said."

Reminds me of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think most Americans don't realize that a precipitating event was that in April we put nuclear missiles in Turkey that could reach Russia quickly (with less warning than our ICBMs) and they weren't happy about it. So they put nuclear missiles in Cuba that could reach us quickly. Then the big 13 days in October. Part of the deal to stop the crisis was that the US would remove the missiles from Turkey, which they did the following April.

I think a similar resolution is possible now. Boehner caves on the debt ceiling issue because he doesn't want to wreck the world economy. He gets a continuing resolution for a few months that funds the government at tea party levels. A few months later they announce a real budget deal (not just another continuing resolution) where Democrats concede something. Then both parties have a year before midterm elections to run on stuff (a year of Obamacare and GOP budget). Meanwhile the economy stays stagnant because what we really need is stimulus.

1 comment:

Richard said...

"And I don’t know what that even is."

...chilling.

We are going to have some trouble before this is over. I really hope the Republicans blink because I dont think the Democrats need to.