Done Deal:: Govt. Shutdown 2.0 is Shutdown; Now What Have We Learned?

     Finally, What we got tonight is exactly what we have gotten on September 30 had the Boehner simply allowed the vote he allowed tonight. 

     "Congress capped off a tense and exhausting day Wednesday with back-to-back Senate and House votes on a bill to re-open the shuttered government through Jan. 15 and prevent a catastrophic default on the country's debt until at least Feb. 7."

     http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/disaster-averted-but-congress-braces-for-next-showdown

     However, there's concern among Republicans that the Republicans haven't learnt the right lessons here. 

    "We should be concerned," said Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). "Definitely."

     "Well, we'll see, won't we?" sighed Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). "You know, the environment that we're in here is -- well, it is what it is. ... There's an old adage: 'There's nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.' So maybe there's been a little bit of education. We'll see."

     "Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), a conservative who has been critical of the hard right "lemmings" who shut down the government over Obamacare, lamented to TPM that they have "probably not" learned their lesson when it comes to picking self-defeating fights."

     I mean if they do try to play debt ceiling chicken again it's their funeral as with the extraordinary powers given the Treasury as part of this deal we won't be on the brink of default again until the Summer with the 2014 election only a couple of months away. Do they really want to go down this road then? So while I've been wrong before thanks to giving the GOP too much credit-and I'm the Republican hater-by thinking Boehner would never let us have another shutdown, I have a hard time thinking that we'll have more debt ceiling chicken next year-and I have my doubts that we'll have another shutdown. If nothing else Boehner appears unwilling to default on our debt. As Jedi says, that's about the nicest thing you can say about him. 

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/16/1247958/-Captain-Obvious-We-didn-t-win

   I'm with Jonathan Chait:

    "We are pretty far from okay, but it beats spending the rest of your life getting raped in a dungeon, which is more or less what the House Republicans had planned. The Republican debt-ceiling gambit was meant to force Obama to accept the GOP agenda without any Republican concessions — a depressing enough outcome on its own. But it also would have dragged in a reordering of the Constitutional order and the institutionalization of endless crises and panics. We can’t be certain Republicans will never hold the debt ceiling hostage again; but Obama has now held firm twice in a row, and if he hasn’t completely crushed the Republican expectation that they can extract a ransom, he has badly damaged it. Threatening to breach the debt ceiling and failing to win a prize is costly behavior for Congress — you anger business and lose face with your supporters when you capitulate. As soon as Republicans come to believe they can’t win, they’ll stop playing."

     http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/stop-fretting-the-debt-ceiling-crisis-is-over.html

    He also makes the point that the GOP's mind numbingly stupid behaviour throughout this whole needless fiasco has overshadowed some very sharp play by the Dems. 

    "Most of the analysis has focused on the mind-boggling stupidity of Republicans in Congress, who blundered into a debacle that failed in exactly the way they were warned it would. The episode will be retold and fought over for years to come, perfectly emblemizing the party’s internal disorganization, mindless belligerence, and confinement within an ideological echo chamber that sealed out important warnings of failure. A grassroots revolt forced Republicans to shut down the government two weeks before the debt ceiling deadline, serving to weaken the party's standing at the moment they hoped to hold the default gun to Obama's head. (It's possible they lesson they'll take away from their failure will only be not to shut down the government and threaten default at the same time, requiring another showdown.)"

   "But it also represents a huge Democratic success — or, at least, the closest thing to success that can be attained under the circumstances. Of the Republican Party’s mistakes, the most rational was its assumption that Democrats would ultimately bend. This was not merely their own recycled certainty — “nobody believes that,” a confident Paul Ryan insisted of Obama’s claims he wouldn’t be extorted — but widespread, world-weary conventional wisdom. Democrats would have to pay a ransom. Republicans spent weeks prodding for every weakness. Would Senate Democrats from deep red states be pried away? Would Obama fold in the face of their threat?"

    "Part of what undergirded Democratic unity went beyond a (correct) calculation that it would be dangerous to pay any ransom at all. Democrats seemed to share a genuine moral revulsion at the tactics and audacity of a party that had lost a presidential election by 5 million votes, lost another chance to win a favorable Senate map, and lost the national House vote demanding the winning party give them its way without compromise."

    "Probably the single biggest Republican mistake was in failing to understand the way its behavior would create unity in the opposing party. Not until the very end, when the crisis was well under way, did any conservatives even acknowledge the Democratic view that the GOP had threatened basic governing norms. Ted Cruz and his minions may have undertaken a hopeless crusade, but they dragged along the Paul Ryan Republicans who all along seemed to think their extortion scheme was a simple business deal. Its collapse is one of the brightest days Washington has seen in a grim era."

     Amen. I think this may explain GOP stupidity-their unheard of arrogance. The idea that they can as the minority party demand unilateral concessions-this is a special stupidity born of total hopeless arrogance. This is why they can't learn anything. They're such a stupid party-at least in recent years-because they're such an arrogant party. The trouble with arrogance is not that you fool others but that you fool yourself. 

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