The Government Shutdown Countdown Lowdown MEGATHREAD

[Sheilbh]

Okay, more cynically. That's a benefit, but what's the upside for the party?

Is there any indication they're going to get anything on Obamacare? Even if they don't but they go for a grand bargain there's already opposition to that from the populist wing of the right - one for giving up on Obamacare and two for the cuts they'll involve.

As I'd see it they'd remove the potent threat of financial disaster that can justify them folding, without resolving any of their issues or divisions. This would just continue their slow boiling civil war, continue to make it public and continue to attract opprobrium for the shutdown.

I agree with the House leadership: if they've got to take a bullet better to take one than spread out two.

[mongers]

I guess I may be guilty of the thing I'm accusing Berkut of myself.  I see OWS as a movement arising from the rebellion to the destructive casino capitalist system, but that may be wishful thinking in trying to ascribe what I think are sorely needed protests to a bunch of aimless malcontents.

Hard to say, I never met any of the OWS / American occupy people.   

[Sheilbh]

Here's a couple of pieces I agree with, first Douthat:

The Costs of Fantasy Politics

As of this morning, there's reason to hope that some time next week the government shutdown will end, the debt ceiling will be temporarily raised, and I'll be able to write a follow-up to my column on Pope Francis, or something about what should be the political story of the moment — the don't-call-it-trainwreck debut of Healthcare.gov — or even (who knows?) something more esoteric and random and fun. But for today, let me go one more round with Ben Domenech, who wrote yesterday in defense of a Republican strategy that would lift the debt ceiling while keeping the government shutdown going, and going, and going — a move that I likened on CNN to postponing a murder-suicide in order to just concentrate on slitting your own wrists, but which Domenech regards in a more favorable light. To my previous suggestion that the shutdown is ratifying the public's pre-existing distrust of G.O.P. governance, he writes:

Except ... the House Republicans weren't trusted with anything like the reins of government even before the shutdown, either (they were already the most unpopular Congress ever before the last election – should they really fear the difference between 14 percent popularity then and 10 percent popularity today?). The American people have a longstanding belief, bolstered by a century of campaigning, that Democrats generally love government and Republicans generally hate it, and that's fine in a midterm election, especially in an era when no one trusts the government with anything.

The logical, responsible policy move here given Obamacare's disastrous launch would be an individual mandate delay, just like Jon Stewart and Wolf Blitzer have suggested. Douthat's right that Obama won't ever agree to do that. But every day he doesn't is a good day to advance the argument, and asserting that delay as the price of reopening the government doesn't mean you have to get it in order to be successful.

And what's the alternative? Some folks apparently think there's some deal to be made on the debt ceiling regarding entitlements – is that really more feasible? Boehner's held his caucus together with the exception of a few grumbling moderates, and any policy win he gets is a policy win he wouldn't have had otherwise.

Not surprisingly I disagree. First, it's completely possible for Republicans to seem too irresponsible, reckless and anti-government even for a midterm, base-mobilization election: Just ask the G.O.P. Senate candidates who lost entirely-winnable races even in the conservative wave election of 2010. The fact that the House G.O.P. is insulated from public opinion doesn't mean that it can't suffer reversals, and even if it doesn't there is no political world in which these kind of polling numbers make the path to a Republican Senate majority anything but harder to map out.

Second, the strategy that Republicans choose today doesn't only shape the landscape for 2014: It has consequences for the Republicans' broader position and brand identity, and for how everything from ongoing gubernatorial campaigns to the '16 presidential election plays out. The G.O.P.'s problem at the moment is that it's a congressional party with no clear ability to win presidential-level majorities. In that context, a faction that's trying to gain control of the party — as the right's populists currently are — should be demonstrating why its preferred approach and preferred policies are winning ones, and why a more populist turn can actually help Republicans avoid a replay of 2012 in 2016 and beyond. But the strategy that the populists are currently pursuing — narrowing the definition of True Conservatism to a point where tactics rather than ideology are the only working litmus test, pursuing those tactics even when they put conservatives squarely on the wrong side of public opinion, and then denouncing any alternative approach as a sell-out that justifies bolting for a third party — is likely to deliver one of two alternatives instead: Either a successful populist/Tea Party takeover, à la Goldwater in '64, that leaves the party in no position to actually contest a national election and secures Obama's legacy instead, or a backlash that elevates a Republican nominee who runs against Congressional conservatives, à la George W. Bush in 2000, and in the process re-empowers all the interest groups that the populists detest.

Third, I agree with Domenech that this is the perfect political moment for Republicans to be arguing for an individual mandate delay. But given that he himself concedes that Obama isn't going to cave and go along with such a policy move, how on earth does it help the G.O.P. press their case on the mandate issue if they're tying it to government shutdown that's even more unpopular than Obamacare? (Every day that Obama doesn't agree to delay the individual mandate is a good day to argue that he should ... unless it's also a day when you're shutting down the government!) Again, I understand the idea that threatening a shutdown on the health care law was a plausible way to help push the Obamacare issue back to center stage. But actually going through with the shutdown completely defeats the purpose of the push, because ... well, just read the polling for yourself.

And as for the alternative to all of this? Well, I suppose one possible alternative would be for Republicans to step outside the murder-suicide context of shutdowns and debt ceiling brinksmanship, set aside the fantasy of winning major policy victories in divided government, cut a few small deals if possible and otherwise just oppose the president's agenda on issues like immigration and climate change, and try to win the next two elections on the merits. This is how American political parties normally seek to enact their preferred policies, and the fact that the Republicans and Democrats are currently further apart ideologically than our political parties have traditionally been only strengthens the case for this old-fashioned way of doing things. Want to repeal/replace Obamacare, reform entitlements, do tax reform without tax increases? Go win a presidential election.

One final word: In today's edition of the Transom, Domenech urges Republicans freaked out by the disastrous polls to "keep calm and read Nate Silver." Here's what Silver has to say, in a piece downplaying the shutdown's likely impact on the next election cycle:

None of this applies if the United States actually does default on its debt this time around, or if the U.S. shutdown persists for as long as Belgium's. But if the current round of negotiations is resolved within the next week or so, they might turn out to have a relatively minor impact by November 2014.

Right. If the current round of negotiations is resolved within the next week or so. Which seems like a much, much better argument for escaping from the shutdown cul-de-sac as swiftly as possible than for fighting it out on the current lines if it takes all autumn.

And Ezra Klein ():

The shutdown probably won't hurt Republicans in 2014. Here's what will.
By Ezra Klein, Published: October 11 at 12:03 pmE-mail the writer

I agree with Nate Silver on this: Political events in October 2013 are very unlikely to drive an election in November 2014.

That's particularly true assuming the GOP backs off soon. As Silver writes, "if the current round of negotiations is resolved within the next week or so, they might turn out to have a relatively minor impact by November 2014."

But the problem for the Republican Party isn't this shutdown. It's what led to this shutdown.

There are two ways to interpret the GOP's ill-considered strategy over these last few weeks. One is that it's an aberration. They just made a mistake. It won't happen again.

The other is that it's structural. They're not here because they forgot to carry the one. They're here because their party has become structurally dysfunctional in ways that are leading to self-destructive behavior.

If the structural explanation is correct, then some kind of temporary deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling to make room for budget negotiations isn't likely to do the Republican Party much good. The problems will persist, and recur, over the next year — and thus they will affect the 2014 election.

Imagine this scenario: Republicans agree to reopen the government and suspend the debt ceiling for six weeks while they try and negotiate a deal on Obamacare and the budget with President Obama. If the GOP's problem was simply that they made a mistake when planning this strategy and they have since learned their lesson, this could solve their problem: They strike a deal with the Obama administration that cuts entitlements and raises taxes and maybe makes some tweaks to Obamacare and that's end of the insane showdowns. In that world, this won't do the GOP much damage come 2014.
But does anyone really believe we live in that world?

First, as badly as they want to do that, as terrible as the polls look for them, top Republicans don't seem able to convince their members to reopen the government and suspend the debt ceiling so negotiations can take place in a more normal, less politically damaging, context. But let's assume they could.

The makeup of the GOP's coalition is such that the party's leaders can't sell the base on any compromise that Democrats would accept. They've all taken a pledge not to raise taxes (a pledge that's apparently so unbreakable that they won't even accept chained-CPI, which was one of their demands, without offsetting tax cuts). They're viewed with intense skepticism by the Tea Party.

So the question is, what then? If they reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling for six weeks and then they get nothing for it, will they really be able to pass a clean CR and another debt-ceiling increase in late-November? Or will the Tea Party feel that they gave Speaker John Boehner and his team a chance to do it their way and they failed. Now it's back to confrontation.

You can already see the seeds of this narrative being planted. Sen. Ted Cruz is telling his supporters that the polls look terrible for Democrats and that "the House of Reps needs to keep doing what it's been doing ... standing strong!" "I blame the leadership primarily because they decided to follow Cruz's strategy but in a half-[hearted] way," tweeted the Weekly Standard's Jay Cost, though the word he used wasn't "hearted."

If this ends and the negotiations fail, the lesson many in the party will take isn't that the GOP erred terribly in in employing these extreme and unpopular tactics. It'll be that they erred terribly in backing down from them, and letting the leadership muck up the clear messaging of Ted Cruz and the Tea Party.

Republicans should be very worried about what this episode means for their party in the midterms. But not because the shutdown itself is going to be foremost in voter's minds 13 months from now. It's because the shutdown is evidence of a Republican crack-up that is leading the party to pursue doomed, reckless and self-destructive campaigns. And if they keep doing that through the rest of 2013 and much of 2014, that will matter in the elections.

I wonder if, as I thought in 2012, the GOP need to get this out their system. Losing winnable Senate seats isn't enough. They need to nominate a Presidential candidate who truly excites the base and then he needs to lose enormously before the party can move on.

[CountDeMoney]

the most culturally elitist President in generations, a man who doesn't even feign to be folksy.

Oh, I don't know:  the Poppy Bush of Yale and Kennebunkport was pretty much the very definition of the culturally elitism of dynastic WASP wealth and power.

[CountDeMoney]

China state media blasts US shutdown, calls for a 'de-Americanized' world

By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC News
News analysis

BEIJING –With days to go before the United States debt default deadline, Beijing aired its frustrations with the shutdown Sunday, saying it was time to consider a "de-Americanized" world order.

With $1.28 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, China is easily the biggest foreign holder of American debt.

China has also funneled billions of dollars into private American investments – to the tune of an estimated $54 billion in 2012 alone.

"As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world," according to a stinging op-ed article by state news agency, Xinhua.

The article, published Sunday, conveyed Beijing's frustration with the spending and debt impasse that has paralyzed Washington for more than two weeks.

"Days when the destinies of others are in the hands of a hypocritical nation have to be terminated, and a new world order should be put in place, according to which all nations, big or small, poor or rich, can have their key interests respected and protected on an equal footing," the piece added.

Should Congress not come to an agreement by Thursday's deadline on a new raised debt ceiling – the upper limit set by Congress on the amount of money the Federal government may borrow – China's potential losses stand to be devastating.

Prior to Sunday's commentary article, Chinese officials had been more measured in their analysis of the U.S. budget impasse. Last week, Vice-Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao  noted only that "we have to see that the clock is ticking."

To many in China, the restraint on the part of China's ruling Communist Party over its second-largest trade partner's government problems was perhaps based in the belief that neither party, Democrat or Republican, would allow the U.S. to not honor its financial obligations.

"If we are really rational, I cannot imagine why someone would dare to bear this kind of responsibility because any real default will have a huge impact not only on the U.S. and China, but on the global economy," said Professor Zhao Longkai, a dean at the Guanghua School of Management at Beijing University. "It's hard for us to imagine anyone can be that crazy to push the limit to that level."

Zhao said the patience China had shown until recently was rooted not only in Beijing's confidence in America's ability to deal with the budgetary crisis, but also its own burgeoning self-confidence.

"For average Chinese people [the budget crisis] is a show there and we've seen it before... we also know that it's not only the United States that we are relying on, we have a lot of other investments," Zhao said.

The Xinhua commentary may raise eyebrows in Washington, but Beijing's frustration underscores a key point: Despite a desire to diversify its holdings, the Chinese government continues to buy U.S. Treasury bonds out of political and economic necessity.

As long as China's domestic growth and stability are boosted by American debt, the deep ties between the two countries will likely endure.

[Ed Anger]

I'd like a de-chinafied world. With Minutemen III's.

[CountDeMoney]

That would be unpopular, Ed. 
Everybody knows China is more popular than the US in all the global polls.  I'm sure the rest of Asia would sincerely appreciate Chinese hegemony in the isolationist vacuum left by the Rand Administration.

[Ed Anger]

A good bit of isolationism would remind the fucking foriegners of how good they had it.

[derspiess]

No shit.

[mongers]

A good bit of isolationism would remind the fucking foriegners of how good they had it.

[Razgovory]

Yeah, then Russia can just start gobbling up the former soviet Republics.

[Sheilbh]

Everybody knows China is more popular than the US in all the global polls.  I'm sure the rest of Asia would sincerely appreciate Chinese hegemony in the isolationist vacuum left by the Rand Administration.

Not anymore:#

And certainly not in Asia or, say, France.

[CountDeMoney]

Not anymore:#

And certainly not in Asia or, say, France.

Oh yeah, that's really pulling away from each other.  Amazing what a change in US administrations can do, even if there's no policy change.

It is still pretty disconcerting to see China's "positive" ranking still so high.

[Razgovory]

Looks like the the Axis is doing pretty good.

[Sheilbh]

Oh yeah, that's really pulling away from each other.  Amazing what a change in US administrations can do, even if there's no policy change.

That's 2013 so I don't think it'll have much of the Obama bounce left.

I think China's decline in the ratings is to do with her occasional attempts at more assertive foreign policy. Which always terrifies the rest of Asia/the World.