Regardless, Republicans already are losing.
Better get those emergency crops growing. Potato currency is best currency.
Dug over a vegetable patch yesterday - we'll be planting wine, though. But potatoes always remain an opportunity.
These guys are up with me.
Anywho, I still see this as a calculated, tactical brinkmanship. I don't think that they'll go all the way with this, surely they realize that a default on U.S debt would screw everyone over, up to and including themselves. The growing disquiet going on over this is just what they need though. They're hoping that it will reach such a fever pitch that the opposition will cave, because they sure look crazy enough to go through with it.
Where have we seen tactics like this before? It seems so oddly familiar...
The President and the Democrats have played a very good game of Dr. Strangelove Negotiating. They haven't threatened anything, they merely have warned. The difference is a threat stakes your word on something, a warning states you will do something regardless of whether you say it or not. "We will not negotiate with terrorists". They know that if they really do go over the cliff the The Tea Party is destroyed as a entity and republicans as a whole, and if the Tea Party concedes they win politically and survive econimically. Their position is quite strong here, and most people know it.
The Tea Party here is in the position of 1 hostage-taker with 1 hostage who's just heard over the mega-phone that the police will not negotiate. Their options are shoot the hostage, and lose the last leverage they have (leading to them being killed by the Police, or in this extended metaphor, being destroyed completely as a political movement) or surrendering. The only situation where they take a option other then surrender is where they hold some belief that they can win after shooting the hostage. They got away in the Sequestor, and they have been trying to play-down the consequences of the Shutdown, so this is a common thought amongst some of them. This is insane, and many others know this. One of the worst problems is that because of gerry-mandering, this risk doesn't apply to the people personally responsible, as the Tea Partiers are almost assured their seats. This is a question For Boehner, whose Speakership is a risk.
It's fair to say there won't be a republican in the White House at this rate, and they may actually manage to hand the Democrats total control in the 6th year of a Democratic president. Democrats know this.