Why the shutdown will be so hard to end, in one perfect quote - Ezra Klein

[Bill USA]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/03/wonkbook-why-the-shutdown-will-be-so-hard-to-end-in-one-perfect-quote/

Want to know why the shutdown -- and the coming debt-ceiling fight -- will be so difficult to resolve? Just ask Marlin Stutzman, a conservative congressman from Indiana.

“We’re not going to be disrespected,” he told the Washington Examiner's David Drucker. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

Stutzman is right. The fight over the shutdown has become unmoored from any particular policy demands the GOP believes it can secure. It's become an issue of pride and politics. At this point, Republicans simply need something so they can tell themselves, and their base, that they didn't lose. They don't know what that something is, exactly. But it needs to be something.

By the same token, the Democrats literally can't give them anything without losing. Not until the shutdown ends, anyway. And, on CNBC on Wednesday, President Obama added that the Democrats can't give them anything until the debt ceiling is raised. "Until we get t[the shutdown] done, until we make sure that Congress allows treasury to pay for things that Congress itself already authorized, we are not going to engage in a series of negotiations," Obama said.

It's this dynamic that makes 2013 so much more dangerous than 2011. The negotiations in 2011 weren't zero sum. For one side to win, the other didn't have to lose. That's because the negotiations in 2011 were over policy -- in particular, over a broad deficit-reduction package. Since both sides wanted to reduce the deficit, it was conceivable that both sides could walk away feeling like they'd won some and lost some.

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[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Stutzled:

"We're not going to be disrespected, We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."
-- Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) on the Republican (Boehner's) government shutdown

[mindwalker_i]

2. We look for things, things to make us go

[chill_wind]

3. :-)

"Our computer banks are non-negotiable."
"We want them."
"Believe me, they're nothing if not persistent."
"We want to be nothing if not persistent."

[blkmusclmachine]

4. The GOPee: America's #1 Terror Organization.

America, Meet Bathtub

[Myrina]

5. Gonna scream until I puke in the checkout line

"Because I want SOMETHING, dammit Mommy!
No, I don't want gum.
No, I don't want M&M's.
No, I don't want Cheetoh's.
Quit asking me!
I don't know what I want!
I just want something and I'm going to scream because I can."