“We don’t want to shut down the government,” they say, repeating the mantra often so we remain aware that there is the possibility that is exactly what they will do if they don’t have their way with the budget.
“We won’t negotiate in the media,” Cong. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said recently, but of course, that is exactly what he is doing.
Fear is an powerful tool. What makes waterboarding so effective is not that the victim might drown, but that the victim feels a though he will drown. Scare enough of us old people into thinking our Social a Security checks will be late and we will follow the wolf anywhere.
The plan can, of course, backfire. For a threat to be effective, you have to be willing to carry it out if your bluff is called. Plenty of Republicans are still alive who remember what happened the last time they pulled that shutdown stunt.
It wasn’t a joyous time for Newt Gingrich’s crowd. Democrat Bill Clinton’s approval shot up, and some analysts point to his 1996 re-election as a major beneficiary, especially after Newt said publicly his purpose in engineering the shutdown had been to get back at Clinton for making him sit in the back of Air Force One.
The names have changed: Clinton is Obama, and Gingrich is Boehner. And Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has made no secret of his goal to make Obama a one-term president, thus picking up Gingrich’s mantle of personal vendetta.
Unless cooler Republican heads prevail, the team of “So be it” Boehner and “One-term” McConnell could be the best thing for Democrats since the 1994 convention launched Barack Obama’s run to the White House.
