The Democrats Won’t Be Fooled Again

The GOP House is passing bills that would undo the most visible consequences of the shutdown. Beutler explains why Democrats aren’t biting:

[Republicans] ran a version of this play after the sequestration order went out earlier this year. They pushed for special flexibility for the FAA, so that business travelers wouldn’t be inconvenienced by flight delays and Dems gave it to them. It was an error. In so doing, they placated a powerful lobby they could have marshaled to rescind all of the cuts. Poor people had no such recourse, and sequestration continues to harm the programs they rely on to this day.

Democrats aren’t falling for it this time. They passed a bill to secure military pay, but have so far rejected all other piecemeal shutdown fixes. Not because they’re craven or want the shutdown, and not even really because they care about the principle of equal treatment, though I suppose they do. Democrats aren’t letting Republicans make the shutdown they caused painless for themselves to endure. And that’s set off a massive fight for narrative control. Who’s really pro-shutdown, if Republicans are at least trying to open parts of it? Republicans want to enlist the press in its campaign to flip the script on Democrats, and have even had some success.

Scheiber imagines a possible endgame:

If the GOP can essentially fold on everything Obama insists they fold on, but come away with some deficit-related totem that gives the Tea Partiers the impression they won something—well, that wouldn’t look so much like a pure retreat. That’s where Boehner appears to be headed, even if he won’t admit it yet.

What would that totem look like? In essence, I think Obama can basically give Republicans a trumped-up, impressive-sounding version of what he’s already offered: You guys reopen the government and raise the debt limit, and then I will dispatch my vice president and my entire economic team to negotiate face-to-face with Paul Ryan over a long-term deficit deal every week for two months (or whatever), after which they will report back to me, and John Boehner and I will discuss what they’ve come up with. Obama would have essentially offered no concessions for the reopening of the government and the raising of the debt limit. He will have committed to no cuts and no deficit-reduction targets of any kind. But he will have given Boehner a fig leaf that he can show his rank and file to persuade them that this whole suicide mission wasn’t entirely futile.