Let me put it this way. (And yes, I'm going to make more Civil War examples.)
Southern Democrats used to argue, with a straight face, that they were being deprived of equal treatment under the law in the 1800s when any kind of legislation tried to alter, restrict or change the spread of slavery to new territories. They made much bugaboo about how it "violated their guaranteed rights under the Constitution."
They did this in the same breath as they denied that African Americans were being deprived of their rights. Because the issue they publicly debated wasn't truly the issue they and the Northern Republicans were actually disagreeing on. Publicly Northern Republicans said they didn't want to do anything to current slavery, but at the same time they made a lot of noise about equal rights for slaves. So while the expansion of slavery was the topic of debate, the truth of the issue was slavery itself, which both parties tried to act as though it wasn't the crux of the matter. All the energy that fueled the expansion of slavery debate came from the question of slavery, which only after the Civil War started and progressed did Northern Republicans feel like they could actually do something about. It took hundreds of thousands of causalities and total devastation before even the people who supported Abolition from the outset felt like they could make it a reality.
I see this as much the same thing.
Michelle Bachmann et al, by all indication simply don't believe that hitting the debt ceiling and dribbling out money by most-necessary bondholder first would impact the government's security rating. Partly because they're so addicted to believing that legislative conviction trumps reality, partly because they know America is always the best no matter what and the banking sector will slit their own throats to preserve that, partly because they are to a one people who have never known financial hardship and don't really know how credit works...
They know. They're fully aware of how the system works. Their rhetoric isn't for the benefit of Congress, it's for the benefit of the media and their constituents. The people that voted them in don't have a clue how the financial, banking and credit system works world-wide and they don't care a whit for who it actually effects because they assume (as you said) that it will never really reach their doorstep. The Republicans hope for a total collapse because it'd allow them a shot at totally reworking the system with (they hope) a Republican president and a Republican majority. They're gambling on the whole thing falling apart so they can be the ones to rebuild it.
So the real worry for me is that this is more than 13th hour brinkmanship at this point. I'm worried that the Republican majority has internally agreed that no matter how damaging or unprecedented the results are going to be, it's worth it to dethrone Obama. I don't think that's honestly the case though, because there's no way everyone is just going to develop total amnesia within a year, particularly when figures like Mitch McConnell are offering up resolutions into the Congressional Record that say stuff like "we'll pass a resolution to approve the debt ceiling increase, but only after we say that we still reject it on principle."
So I have two choices on what to believe. Assume that literally half the country is completely deluded (which I don't) and that we're headed to Hell, or assume that Republicans cannot have their cake and eat it too, and that this will literally go up the last minute until the Republicans realize they've crossed the threshold and will ultimately be held responsible for the results.
I suppose the other option is that they think they can actually spend the next year and a half blaming Obama for the fallout and that moderates will agree with their reasoning. I do think they're deluded on that front. America may be America, but our moderates are not complete idiots or pathologically uninformed. The pay off the Republicans seek is not something that will satisfy moderates who don't loathe Obama.
It was a gradual process, but the real shift began with the Great Depression (FDR was an atypical Democrat for his era), had a major jolt in 1964 and 1968 when the Southern conservative wing of the Democrats switched en masse to the Republicans, and was pretty much completed by the 1980 election when Reagan got the support of religious conservatives and many of the so-called "Reagan Democrats
Thanks. I assumed the Southern Democrat Body had to go SOMEWHERE en masse, because the worst elements of the Republican attitude of today matches the average Southern Democrat way of behaving to a T.
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Topic: The Debt Ceiling Deal... ing (Read 25235 times)