Who Wins This Fight?

I have thought about this quite a bit and the only conclusion that I can come up with is that Republicans will lose politically in the short, medium, and long term. By making these policy riders a central point in their shutdown argument, they have ceded the high ground.

Democrats have made me proud that they have actually got a message and have made a concerted effort to hammer that message home in the media. Democrats have been too timid with their messaging and how they go on the attack. By going compromising on the spending side and NOT compromising on the policy side they have put Republicans on the defensive.

There are more and more Republicans who are calling for Speaker Boehner to stop the madness and take the deal. From Benjy Sarlin at TPM, they are even willing to give up the attack on women's health.

From Dan Balz at The Washington Post,

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said this week there was no daylight between him and the tea party, a position that helped him hold his rambunctious caucus together during the negotiations.

But the tea party’s apparent hold on the House leadership comes at a time of diminishing popularity for the movement. A new poll from the Pew Research Center showed that “slightly more disagree with the tea party than agree with the movement, a reversal in public evaluations from a year ago,” according to the center’s news release.

The tail is wagging the Republican party as they have put themselves in a position from which it will be hard to extricate themselves. They have kept up the incessant drumbeat of campaign speech and have yet to start the process of governing. They have whipped their tea-party base up into such a lather that any compromise is seen as capitulation. This bad for the country and Independents will certainly make Republicans pay a price if they keep saying no to everything.