GOP's fixation on extracting anything from Obama blinding them to the incoherence of their game plan

[DonViejo]

CLUELESS PARTY HAS NO STRATEGY

Clueless Republicans hatch incoherent shutdown strategy

The GOP's fixation on extracting anything from Obama is blinding them to the incoherence of their game plan

BRIAN BEUTLER

This weekend, House Republicans passed more bills to fund the most photogenic parts of the federal government, hoping perhaps that the 11th time will be the charm, or that they can eventually trick Democrats into underplaying their winning hand. They even passed one, with overwhelming Democratic support, to pay furloughed workers retroactively once the shutdown ends.

I gave this strategy brief treatment on Friday, if you want a primer. The short version is that Republicans are attempting, probably hopelessly, to reverse the optics of the government shutdown by attacking Democrats for not providing special treatment to its most conspicuous functions.

But in addition to relying on Americans to forget everything they know about the two political parties, this strategy — if you can even call it a strategy — is only about one inch deep. And in a way it almost reveals that Republicans don’t have the fortitude they’ll need if they seriously intend to not increase the debt limit.

Let’s start with the following axiom: House Republicans wouldn’t be holding serial votes on piecemeal government funding bills (all of which President Obama has threatened to veto, by the way) if they didn’t know that suspending these programs was such a huge political liability. So suddenly the Republicans of arbitrary austerity and anti-bureaucrat fame are pretending to be tribunes of the public sector.

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/07/the_internal_illogic_of_the_republicans_shutdown_strategy/