"Today we have the GOP response. Via Politico, GOP leaders are leaking word that their Tea Party members really are serious — really, they are! — about going into default if necessary, to force the White House to cut spending once and for all:
Republican leadership officials, in a series of private meetings and conversations this past week, warned that the White House, much less the broader public, doesn’t understand how hard it will be to talk restive conservatives off the fiscal ledge. To the vast majority of House Republicans, it is far riskier long term to pile up new debt than it is to test the market and economic reaction of default or closing down the government."Yeah, okay. The game here is: “Hey, we can’t control our crazies!!! Better give us what we want before they destroy us all!!!”
GOP officials said more than half of their members are prepared to allow default unless Obama agrees to dramatic cuts he has repeatedly said he opposes. Many more members, including some party leaders, are prepared to shut down the government to make their point.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/01/14/the-morning-plum-the-debt-ceiling-is-the-gops-problem-lather-rinse-repeat/
As Sargent says, it's still on them if they don't raise the debt ceiling, it doesn't suddenly give hte President responsibility for their failures. Of course, 50% of members actually voting for the debt ceiling hike is more than enough with near 100% of the Democrats.
Another aspect of the idleness of the threat is that while Boehner is-ludicrously-demanding $1 spending cut for every $1 the debt ceiling is raised, he won't name the cuts-as he didn't during the fiscal cliff fight.
Obama is supposedly going to be pushed into naming big Medicare and Social Security cuts any day now. This underscores how unpopular these cuts are.
The fact is the GOP will get the blame if we did default as they have done when they've tried this in the past:
Relatedly, Jonathan Cohn makes the key point that if anything, the pressure on Republicans to agree to raise the debt ceiling will be more intense than it was in 2011:
Polls suggest that Republicans will take most of the blame for a prolonged showdown — and any economic consequences it brings. History implies the same. Approval ratings for congressional Republicans fell after the summer of 2011. Republicans had reason to risk the political backlash back then, because they knew that Obama, already facing a tough reelection battle, would feel it too. This time around, the calculus has to be different. House Republicans still have to run for reelection in two years. Obama has to run for reelection…never.As I’ve been saying, it has been growing more and more apparent that the threat by House GOP leaders to default is largely an empty one. The White House believes that removing all options other than an eventual cave by Republicans will only make this clearer for all to see.
The one thing Chait doesn't mention is that 1995 was another time the GOP played brinkmanship and suffered all of the political blowback. In both 1995 and 2011 they had more leverage than they do now-where in fact they have none.
The President, I think, calculates correctly that taking the platinum coin actually puts it more on the GOP-as Sumner has suggested. Otherwise they could have had the out that Obama would bail them out by taking it all on himself.
It seems to me that this battle must be a particularly frustrating one for the GOP in that there really is no battle. The White House is not even taking them seriously-as it shouldn't. Next they'll try to use the sequester-trouble there is that they are as opposed to the military cuts as Dems are to the domestic programs.
What they will slowly realize is that there is no leverage. As the Kirstol Premise says: elections have consequences. They will have to compromise with Obama a lot more than they want to think.
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