I must be missing something. (It wouldn’t be the first time, my wife and daughter are only too happy to remind me.) There is nearly (but not quite) universal agreement — either anxiously fearful or gleefully hopeful — that a Republican insistence on refusing to fund Obamacare would be responsible for any ensuing government shutdown. As even the always perspicacious James Taranto writes:
The Democrats hold a 54-46 majority in the Senate, so that five of them would have to defect in order to send the ObamaCare-free resolution to the president for signature or veto. There is no indication that any Senate Democrat is considering such a break with the party, which means there is no realistic prospect of enacting the House resolution, or even passing it though Congress and forcing an Obama veto.
That leaves House Republicans with two unappetizing alternatives: pass a “clean” resolution, without the ObamaCare provision, and thereby let Obama win; or refuse to pass a resolution and force a government shutdown.
I don’t get it. If the House Republicans pass a continuing resolution that funds everything except Obamacare and the Senate Democrats refuse to pass any continuing resolution that doesn’t fund Obamacare, why is the stalemate and shutdown the sole fault of the Republicans? Why, in short, is it the Republicans who would “force a government shutdown” by their willingness to fund everything except Obamacare and not the Democrats, who are unwilling to fund anything unless Obamacare is included?
In fact, the confusion over causation in our current partisan civil war very much resembles the political and historiographical debate over the causes of our actual Civil War, something I’ve written about at length here, here, and here. Anyone who doubts that assertion (and everyone else) should read the last of those, which folds in the first two, now.
“In fact, the confusion over causation in our current partisan civil war very much resembles the political and historiographical debate over the causes of our actual Civil War,”
Have you read Thomas Fleming’s “A Disease in the Public Mind” If not you should — much of what he says will seem familiar, such as the refusal to compromise and the tendency to believe that anyone who disagreed with you was either a knave or a fool.
What do you expect from James Taratoad? He is a RINO who wants 20 million new Demoncrat voters.
Why is there any serious consideration of cause-and-effect, or even “consequences”, in ANY discussion with Senate, and Budget, in the same paragraph?
Tell me again about “the law”?