Author: Andrew Sullivan

Yesterday, Stan Collender claimed that it “still no better than 50-50 … that the debt ceiling will be raised by October 17”:

One of the biggest problem[s] with the current shutdown/debt ceiling situation is that no one has any assurance that the person they’re negotiating with has any authority to agree to anything. The president can’t be sure congressional Democrats will go along with what he might agree to with Republicans, Boehner absolutely knows there is no guarantee that House and Senate Republicans will follow his lead and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) won’t be followed blindly by Senate Republicans. In other words, even if there were a deal it is not clear who could agree to it.

This, and the likelihood of simple miscalculation of time, could render any agreement moot, and tip the markets into a tailspin, along with our recovery. I just hope that sense of urgency exists in these negotiating rooms. The point is not that we should get out of this fiasco by the skin of our teeth – but that a functioning country never gets even close to this kind of potential meltdown. Every day that passes erodes the credibility of the US economy and government, and thereby its currency. And at some point, the erosion becomes a mudslide.

McConnell is in favor of it:

McConnell embraced a plan by Senator Susan Collins — the Republican from Maine — on Sunday, which would raise the debt limit through January and fund the government through the end of March, while delaying for two years Obamacare’s medical-device tax and require income verification in order to qualify for Obamacare subsidies.

I truly want to get a deal but this one would be, to my mind, merely a delay in the crisis, even an extension of it. If the GOP were to take the debt ceiling off the table, or come up with a way to do it indefinitely, we’d be talking. When hostage-takers release the hostage, they don’t usually get to keep their weapons. But if that is not an option, then, as an interim step, why not raise the debt limit through January 2015 and let the midterms decide the fiscal future?

And if the GOP needs a face-saver, I suppose K-Street’s medical device tax is as meaningless a concession as any. It’s not integral to the ACA. And you can see why the president might have negotiated such a thing outside of any self-induced debt crisis. As for sequestration, I have no problems with keeping spending at those levels until March, along Collins lines, and I think the Democrats should be very wary of over-playing their hand. We are in an emergency here – and haggling over spending levels for the next six months does not seem to me to be a good enough reason to hold up a potential deal.

Ezra explains why Democrats have rejected it nonetheless:

Two main arguments were made against the Collins deal. First, it locks in sequestration levels of spending for six months. Key Senate Democrats see that as a much larger, and more dangerous, concession than the old CR, which only agrees to it for six weeks. Second, the deal’s delay of the medical device tax meant it was, in fact, a concession in order to reopen the government — and Democrats think it’s important to persuade the GOP that they can’t win anything through this kind of hostage taking.

I don’t think that’s a big win. I think it’s a minimal concession for them to save face in what is already a political disaster for them. Jonathan Cohn adds:

Reid and McConnell are still talking. Those talks will probably be the basis of whatever agreement ends this crisis. But Democrats have established a pretty simple test for new proposals: Is it a deal Democrats would make in normal circumstances, without a shutdown and without the threat of default? So far, nothing Republicans have suggested comes close to meeting that criteria.

I think adjusting a medical devices tax in return for a sequester-level CR and a lifting of the debt ceiling till after the mid-terms would be easily a deal Dems would accept under normal circumstances. The key issue, in my view, is the debt ceiling threat. That’s the fiscal weapon of mass destruction we have to abolish or defuse indefinitely.

A cruel, vain, exploitative, nihilist, irrelevant, made-for-TV game:

Conor Friedersdorf sighs:

What I think, when I see that memorial closures are the thing that gets conservatives in the streets, is that movement leaders and rank-and-file activists alike cannot be counted on to identify and take on the most serious issues facing veterans, or the most serious threats to liberty. Instead they spend their time seizing on symbolic issues that promise to result in the best optics for a given news cycle — World War II veterans traveled to Washington and can’t visit the memorial dedicated to them!

Think what victory would mean in this instance: the barricades would come down, which will happen anyway as soon as the government reopens. In other words, there’s no substantive upside for this particular rally, whether you’re concerned about benefiting veterans or safeguarding liberty. It was held so that Cruz and Palin could aggrandize themselves, so that conservatives could revel in their self-image as liberty loving patriots who honor veterans, and so that the Obama Administration would look bad. Protests are nothing more than political theater for these people. Or if they actually intend to effect change, their strategy verges on nonsensical.

Earlier Dish on the rally here.

You realize they are not conservative in any way at all. Yelling at police doing their job maintaining security at the White House, calling them “brownshirts,” “stasi” and saying that one unit “looks like something out of Kenya”: can we dispense with any illusions that these are patriotic political actors, respecting those who serve our country in the military or police force? They are delusional, racist fanatics.

And I should add: the composure and restraint of these public servants in the face of these yahoos and morons is remarkable.