GOP House's Push for Shutdown May Unleash Forces Against Them

The gang of GOP House saboteurs who are actively pushing for a government shutdown largely hail from gerrymandered districts that are largely white, ultra conservative and hot beds for rage over the decline of white privilege that GOP demagogues tell them stems from the federal government.  Thus, these saboteurs and extremists face little threat from their constituents revolting against them if indeed the government goes into shutdown on Tuesday.  However, others who have remained on the sidelines so far may be spurred to action and the target of such will likely be the Republican Party as a whole, and deservedly so.  One can only hope that the GOP brand will pay dearly for the extremism of these lunatics who care nothing about the countless families - including those of our military service members - who will be harmed when pay checks cease coming.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at what a shutdown may put int play.  Here are excerpts:

As Alec Phillips put it in a research note for Goldman Sachs, "If a shutdown is avoided, it is likely to be because congressional Republicans have opted to wait and push for policy concessions on the debt limit instead. By contrast, if a shutdown occurs, we would be surprised if congressional Republicans would want to risk another difficult situation only a couple of weeks later. The upshot is that while a shutdown would be unnecessarily disruptive, it might actually ease passage of a debt limit increase."

One way a shutdown makes the passage of a debt limit increase easier is that it can persuade outside actors to come off the sidelines and begin pressuring the Republican Party to cut a deal. One problem in the politics of the fiscal fight so far is that business leaders, Wall Street, voters and even many pundits have been assuming that Republicans and Democrats will argue and carp and complain but work all this out before the government closes down or defaults. A shutdown will prove that comforting notion wrong, and those groups will begin exerting real political pressure to force a resolution before a default happens.

It's worth noting, for the record, that it would be vastly better if there was no shutdown and no default and House Republicans stopped trying to enact an agenda that lost at the polls by threatening the country. But American politics is what it is right now, and given its sorry condition, a shutdown might be the best of very bad options.

With members of the military in my family, it is interesting to watch the GOP alienating this formerly steadfast support for the GOP.  Mess with their families and leave them in a financial bind and I suspect that they will not forget who was responsible come the next election cycle.