It means hes spoken to enough of the Tea Party caucus to know that if he allows anything to happen they will destroy his speakership, and the Koches and others have privately promised to primary him completely out of the House if he gives an inche. He will drive the country over the cliff to protect his personal standing and power. We're screwed.

Boehner doesn't have the votes from the GOP side to raise the debt limit, and he probably wants to get some sort of face saving device to show the looney wing of the House Republicans before he introduces a bill to raise the debt limit.

It's almost as if politicians say one thing to posture in public while planning to do something else in private.

WOW!!!! Eli realized that a politician is talking out of both sides of his mouth!!??!! I can totally see how he got a Pulitzer with that keen sense of observation!!

FUD.

I agree with Goldy. Mint the trillion dollar coins already, Obama!

@4: that assumes Boehner has a plan. He doesn't. None of the Establishment Republican leadership, Boehner included, wanted this fight - but now that they're in it, they're desperately trying to find a way out that doesn't involve financial ruin for the country (read: wealthy Republican donors) or a humiliating defeat for their party. The shutdown is bad enough, but a default would be much much worse.

“All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.”

— U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 7, clause 1

Option #4: Boehner desperately wants to avoid economic catastrophe and the utter destruction of his party, but the insane wing in the House is holding a gun to his head.

The TP holds enough votes to force a change in leadership. Boehner fought hard to get the Speakership, and he will do anything to keep it. Since the TP is going to ram the ship of state into an iceberg no matter what, Boehner figures he'd rather stay on as captain than get demoted to swabbie.

This is the danger of putting weak-willed people in positions od importance. It's pretty clear Boehner got the Speaker's gavel because the Kochs and their teabaggy puppets could push him around. @1 has it exactly right.

Say what you will about Newt Gingrich, but he wouldn't have taken the game of Chicken this far. He had at least enough understanding of politics and enough genuine patriotism under all that jingoism not to risk harming America in this fashion.

@13 Now that we've elected a black president, racist Republicans are perfectly happy with bringing the whole U.S. down. It's what they've wanted since 1861. Now they see their chance.

The only thing that will save us from draconian cuts to what is left of the social safety net is someone walking into the Speaker's office with an offer to work for one some corporation for 7 plus figures a year. The gist of the conversation would be "If you go ahead and piss off the tea nazi's we'll take care of you when you are removed from your speakership".

Wail till the Dow drops below 15 thou-make that 14, uh 13, no 12, make that 11 thousand. Then everyone will be pissed off!

The House leader is a drunk incompetent incapable of leading lemmings. Our country is truly phucked.

There are so many reasons why this conflict could easily end up being as bad as people fear:

The Republicans are split, and everyone knows they are split. But that doesn't mean that Boehner won't stand his ground. There are a lot of Republicans who don't mind the sequester, don't mind the shutdown and don't mind a default. They simply hate big government, so any way that we shrink it is fine. Therefore, no one knows what the Republicans are willing to do -- even the Republicans themselves.

The Republicans think Obama is bluffing. Obama has compromised before. This time, however, he doesn't need to, nor does he want to. He is a lame duck President. It is obvious that he won't get much done in the next three years anyway, as long as the Republicans control the house. Obama gains three things by standing his ground:

1) Protects his core legislative achievement.
2) Makes political gains. Congress is already extremely unpopular and this makes them less popular. There is a really good chance now that the Democrats will regain the House.
3) Prevents this sort of thing from happening again (which, again, is politically sound).

Meanwhile, the Republicans have boxed themselves into a corner. The Democrats simply capitulated on all of the budget issues. If the resolution that passed the House was a budget compromise (asking something of Republicans as well as Democrats) but contained the ACA clause, then the Democrats could reach some sort of budget compromise (more cuts and no ACA clause). But they have already gone as far as they can go. They have met all of the Republican budget demands. Many Republicans now know they have screwed up (in shutting down the government), but are looking for a face saving way to get out of it (thus the "we want something, but we aren't sure what" statement). Meanwhile, the Democrats, for the reasons mentioned above, refuse to talk about anything but the budget.

I just don't see any face saving way out of this. Either the Republicans admit they made a mistake, or we face an extended shutdown, and perhaps a default. There is no reason why they have to be tied together, though. The shutdown is hurting the economy, but it isn't crippling it. The Republicans can simply raise our borrowing limit and stay firm on the shutdown. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they do that, once they figure out that Obama is going to stand firm. Figuring out a way to reopen the government, on the other hand, is a much tougher task.

@10: How is it the White House's part to renegotiate settled law during what should be a straightforward budget resolution?

What the House GOP is asking of Obama are huge concessions that he has no reason, politically or legally, to even consider. What you're proposing is that the House should be able to blackmail the president whenever they can and for whatever stakes they want. And remember, once the precedent is set, it applies to any president and Congress in the future. Is that really what you want?

Not knowing nor caring about what Rob? says @7, I agree, and not simply because Rob? is probably the sharpest tack in the Slog cookie jar, but brevity, I believe needs be highly revered, processed, and intimated.

@ 21, as is the first. Disagree? Make your case or GTFO.

@13,21: Newt Gingrich shut down the government for 21 days in '96, so I don't know how you can think that he "wouldn't have taken the game of Chicken this far."

I really don't get the revisionist reevaluation of Newt Gingrich by so many people these days. He was and remains to be "the stupid person's idea of what a smart person sounds like." (Paul Krugman)

@ 14, while rank and file teabaggers are known to be racist, the powers that run the movement can't be presumed to be motivated by the same thing. What they really hate is the social safety net, and anything reminding them of their social obligation to this nation. I bet they would be driving just as hard toward the cliff if the current president was a white man but otherwise a centrist Democrat who had pushed for all the things Obama has.

Boehner will know whether or not he's bluffing when the Koch brothers tell him.

This study of republican focus groups explains everything.
http://www.democracycorps.com/attachment…
They think Obama has won every battle. They think white America is under attack. They think they are the victims of a gay culture war. They think that the ACA has little to do with healthcare and is an overt attempt to buy and secure the votes of people they feel shouldn't be allowed to vote. They don't think gridlock is a problem on DC. They think the problem is a milquetoast Republican Party won't stand up to Obama.
In summation, they live in bizarro America.

@ 26, if you think this isn't already way beyond Newt's gambit, you're not paying close enough attention.

As far as Newt goes, revisionism, my ass. Don't use words you don't understand.

@31: That's a boldly contentless response from someone who just told another commenter to "make your argument or GTFO."

Now, can you explain to my feeble mind how what Boehner has done up to this point is "way beyond" Newt in 1996? And please don't bring up the debt limit or anything else that Boehner is blustering about but has not yet shown he has any intention of following through on.

@24: False. Obama and his administration enforced DOMA right up until the relevant portions were struck down. He just stopped defending it in court, which he had every right to do. (Also, it's the job of the executive branch, not the legislative branch, to decide the extent to which laws are enforced.) Gee, it's like you don't even Google this shit before you post it.
@27: Izzat so? How about affirmative action, then? Democrats give minorities a fair shot at going to college and lifting themselves up if need be. Republicans oppose it.
Please explain how socialism (which isn't at all implemented here), welfare benefits, and Obamacare in any way foster racial oppression. Cite your sources.
@32: They're doing what they can. Legally, though, the Speaker can ignore the petition for a week or two before a vote is forced.

@ 33, contentless remarks like yours @ 26 don't get the benefit of content-full replies. Although, again, you're as wrong on that point as you were @ 26.

But worse than being merely wrong, you delve into intellectual dishonesty by trying to take the debt limit off the table. Yes, MRM, that is precisely where this is way beyond 1996. The debt limit was never used as a political chess piece back then. It is now, and the implications are truly staggering.

Now get this, if you don't get anything else - the key difference between Gingrich and Boehner isn't how far they go relative to one another, but the fact that Newt was at least his own man while Boehner is not. Newt was a venal, mean spirited and ultimately short sighted leader. He is as responsible for today's political reality as anyone because, more than anyone else, Reagan included, he's the one responsible for the makeup of today's GOP. He's the one who carefully groomed harder right cons for political office, not the feeble minded Reagan, and he's the one whose actions ensured that the rightward tilt would continue after Reagan's time as president (and therefore as any kind of effective leader) ended. The whole thing got away from him, but that's another matter.

All that is true, but he still understood one thing - the debt ceiling was not the place to fight the battle. He didn't understand that shutting down the government wasn't, either, but he at least learned from its failure. What has Boehner or any other elected 'pub you can name learned?

I want to spam the internets with the suggestion that when the US runs out of money (i.e. hits the debt ceiling), we'll still have enough in tax revenues to pay our debt service, and we should suspend everything else.

The Republicans have actually eased the way for this over the last 5 years, with their austerity talk about how we can't pay for anything if we don't have any money. Now, they're cutting off the money, so people should understand why the Administration has to do this.

Furlough the entire government (Except Treasury, the WH, SC, Congress and civil law enforcement), shut the airports, ports and borders. Stop all payments, even if they come from separate funds, as someone has to authorize them and/or pay postage, neither of which we'll have money to do. Cut the power and phones to the Congressional office buildings. No money, no utility bills. Order all military personnel back to base to prepare for demobilization.

If that doesn't get a crowd of pitchforks and torches surrounding the House Republican Caucus, nothing will. And however and whenever we come out of this, maintaining the full faith and credit of the US throughout the crisis, and protecting our currency and the world economy, will allow for a much more rapid recovery than doing the opposite.

@35: You're too dull to realize that trying to take the debt limit off the table shows that I understand exactly what the significance of that issue is.

However, it's not intellectual dishonesty, just my reading of where Boehner is heading on this one. The debt limit is the tipping point where he starts fearing the general public more than the Tea Partiers.

@37 you clearly never went to college that did affirmative action. There's huge safety nets in place to help those who are first generation college students.
Wait, did you really just type that second paragraph? Holy shit, you're a dipshit. There are some serious issues afoot in the black community but being a slave is undeniably worse. The fact that you are so flippant about slavery really shows how little compassion, thought or understanding you have of other human beings.
In all honesty, it's been both parties until the 1950s. You're so stupidly biased you can't seem to wrap your head around that fact.
Some have prospered some have failed. Oprah is richer than any Italian-American, Irish-American or Polish-American. Those ethnic groups must be failures by your limited reasoning.
The US does not spend trillions a year on the black community. Do the math, that shit doesn't even make sense.
Normally I don't bother with you. You're easily the worst poster here. It's not that you're options our baseless and offensive. It's your sheer disregard for facts that seals the deal.

@38,

I've been wondering that myself. Why can't we do that? I understand why we "can't" do it in a political sense, but it seems like, given the corner the Republicans have painted the entire country into, that shutting down just about everything is the only way to avoid default. Although I suspect that just cutting off Social Security checks would be enough to service the debt and bring about that crowd wielding pitchforks.

@23 Word.

@ 39, regarding your first paragraph - uh huh. Make your case or GTFO. I made mine, and if you don't substantially make an effort to counter it, mine stands as correct.

Regarding your second paragraph, time will tell what this does to him, but from my perspective he's going to do the Koch's bidding and fears them more than anyone else.

@37 You are right -Affirmative Action put Clarence Thomas in the Supreme Court, where he is clearly over his head.-arguably one of the least impressive Justices to sit on the Court.

@42 Well, we can't actually steal out of the Social Security trust fund. That's actually our biggest single creditor, holding a huge amount of our securities, more than twice as many as boogey-man China, and fucking around with it, as in borrowing money, would constitute default, breaking the debt limit, or both.

The only thing we'd be doing in suspending payments is saving the personnel and postage costs. We couldn't use that money for debt payment and it would still be due and owing the recipients. But, when you're out of money, suspending personnel and postage costs is a legitimate thing to do, plus in this case, an awesome wakeup call.

You'd still have to close pretty much the rest of the civilian government and as much of the military as necessary to divert enough to servicing the debt.

I wish that shutting down the govt completely would convince people that government is necessary, but a large number of the stupids will draw the conclusion that govt is the problem. We need to take care of the country in spite of those dim witted anarchists.

Dude, fuck that guy. Jesus.

Trying to be Newt Gingrich, but isn't quite enough of a sociopath to pull it off.

Or it could mean that Boehner is not too bright. Who knows? Let's see if his Wall Street supporters allow him to take the country over the economic cliff.

@48 Yeah, we do. But maybe not for a couple of days. Someone needs a wakeup call and shutting their world down will at least get the chattering heads on TV talking about how we can't spend money if Congress cut it all off. Meanwhile, we could service our debt, the world will go on, and when the public walks away from the Teahadis, life should get back to normal, except maybe without so much Teahadiist extortion and Norquistian underfunding in the future.

I don't give a crap what Boehner thinks. He's a self-serving idiot without a shred of credibility. What I do care about is that Obama doesn't back down. It is time to call these people out. They have held up the workings of the government for long enough.

Boner-killler is just telling the Tea Party what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. Dude is going to cave in faster than a drunk girl in prom night.

@55: Affirmative action doesn't give low-performing minority students an advantage. All it does is require that some qualified minority students be offered admission. Dumbass.