Many in the media (how is that for understatement) are blaming Republicans for the shutdown. That is certainly true in that, if the Republicans had been willing to spend all of the money the Democrats want to, there would have been no shutdown.
In terms of PR, certain Republicans unfortunately forced this to be about more than government spending. They decided to try to do things, like delaying the individual mandate under Obamacare for a year, that sound great to the die-hards, but look bad to the middle, and that aren’t going to happen. The President and the Senate Democrats aren’t going to do this. Demanding it just makes you look foolish. (Note: This is not John Boehner’s fault. I very much doubt he wanted to make these demands, but I don’t think he had a choice.) Focusing on Obamacare makes you look intransigent. Focusing on spending would have made the Republicans look responsible. But the crazy right wasn’t having it.
Still, the fact that some on the right are crazy, doesn’t mean some on the left aren’t looney. It’s interesting to compare the President’s refusal to negotiate with Republicans on the need to increase the national debt with his excitement over being allowed to have a telephone conversation with the new Iranian president.
Which gets to the point. When it comes to the shutdown, if you want to figure out who is the main cause, look at who is benefitting from it. Clearly, the mainstream media is blaming the Republicans. Democrats seem to think it is helping them. After meeting with the President on Monday, former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the President should “sit back and watch.”
As it did with the sequester, the Administration seems to trying to make things worse than they need to be. In 1995 Bill Clinton didn’t shut down the Lincoln Memorial. Barack Obama did. It appears the Administration has more people working to keep the World War II memorial closed that it had keeping it open.
The bottom line, in my opinion, is that if John Boehner thought he had somebody to negotiate with, he would. Remember: When President Obama was threatening to attack Syria, both John Boehner and Eric Cantor came out in support of the President right away. But President Obama seems to think he is better off winning, as opposed to negotiating. While it is unfair to attribute the thoughts of a blogger to a President, one wonders if the President is thinking along the lines of Andrew Sullivan:
“This time, the elephant must go down. And if possible, it must be so wounded it does not get up for a long time to come.”
Comments