'“We’re not going to be disrespected,” conservative Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., added. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”
[…] Just as important, however, is the marker Boehner has laid down in this fight and how his caucus would react if he suddenly reversed course and supported a clean budget bill. Boehner originally opposed linking Obamacare to the government funding bill, but gave in to conservatives' demands. Republicans say the speaker has been forceful in closed-door meetings on the funding bill but his credibility could be indelibly damaged if he caves in to Democratic demands now.
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who is close with leadership, suggested that the House majority is prepared to withhold support for a government funding bill and the debt ceiling increase if Democrats continue to refuse to negotiate a compromise. But Republicans are not going to give Democrats the "clean" funding bill they're demanding, he said. “Why in the world would you do that?” Cole said of the clean funding bill. “That’s basically, at this point, a surrender to the Democratic position.”'
Yes, it's stopped being about principle. Or about payoffs. Or even about electability. It's now about winning / not losing, no matter what the cost.
The big problem being, we're all passengers on the kamikaze planes they're piloting toward their destiny.
GOP stands firm against funding bill, will link to debt ceiling fight | WashingtonExaminer.com
Obama has to use the mint to solve that. It's the only answer, and it was the only answer ever since this entire "debt ceiling fight" idea started happening.
I think I don't know enough about the most important part of all this: how is the Speaker chosen, and how can he be removed? Because there's a bill that the House is prepared to pass that would end the shutdown, but Boehner won't bring it to a vote. I'm wondering if there's any way for the congressmen to get fed up enough to just remove him from the position and replace him with someone who will do their goddamn job.
+Brittany Constable Said bill only ends the shutdown, but it doesn't deal with the debt ceiling. We'll be in the exact same spot within weeks.
+Gary Roth True. But if part of ending the shutdown included a different Speaker, perhaps the debt ceiling thing will look a little different.
+Brittany Constable, I'm not convinced that Boehner is the biggest problem here. The Speaker is chosen by the majority party, so any effort to replace him would need to come from the GOP side — and, at this point, the only ones really militating to replace him want to do so because he's too wishy-washy and ideologically impure. Which is probably not pointing toward the outcome we need.
Theoretically, one thing that could change the equation would be a change in monetary donation patterns. If the group of moderate Republicans (two at last count) were to receive huge monetary donations, and the funding for the Tea Partiers were to dry up, then all of this talk about principles would end and a clean continuing resolution would sail out of the House.
However, barring some extraordinary event (Ms. Cyrus Goes to Washington???), the likelihood of Tea Party donations drying up is about as likely as Justin Bieber becoming President.
Given, +John E. Bredehoft, that the Tea Party as an ideological movement has been maintained and leveraged by conservative monied interests (the Koch Bros. being the most prominent), yeah, that seems unlikely.
I recall an interesting article about giving patterns in the last election, to the effect that among the most wealthy individual donors it was not directed toward business interests as much as toward social (conservative) interests, regardless of how the companies associated with those individuals were donating post- Citizens United.