2) Mitch McConnell is AWOL. The Senate minority leader played a crucial role, along with Vice President Joe Biden, in defusing the last crisis, over the fiscal cliff. Never mind that the Kentucky Republican got a pretty good deal — Democrats ended up with way less new tax revenue than Boehner had offered, and lost leverage to obtain more. He’s taken grief for raising any taxes at all, and is desperate to fend off a tea party-fueled primary challenge.
3) The insistence on defunding Obamacare introduces an unfulfillable new demand into an already complicated equation. That’s not going to happen, but enough House members have gotten themselves so worked up over the issue that Boehner’s ploy to give them a symbolic vote and move on with funding the government blew up last week.
You know things are bad when The Wall Street Journal editorial page starts sounding rational. As the Journal described the lunatic strategy, “Republicans must threaten to crash their Zeros into the aircraft carrier of Obamacare. … Kamikaze missions rarely turn out well, least of all for the pilots.”
Yes, but in the House, the crazies are in the cockpit and, in the form of outside groups, supplying the fuel in the form of campaign spending. Boehner doesn’t have control of his caucus.
4) The low-hanging fruit has been plucked. Taxes have been raised on the wealthiest Americans.
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