Testing GOP resolve
by digby
This should be interesting. Greg Sargent:
Senate Dems will move their own clean debt limit bill, rather than wait for the House GOP to hold its own vote on either a clean CR funding the government (which Senate Dems have already passed with broad bipartisan support) or on a debt limit hike. Dems would be challenging Senate GOP moderates to vote for or against averting default and economic havoc outside of any set of conditions House Republicans insist must be attached to any measure raising the debt limit.
Senator John Cornyn is claiming no clean debt limit hike can pass the Senate, but Dems believe there may be at least half a dozen GOP Senators who would be willing to support one. A vote would put that to the test.
The move might also increase pressure on House Republicans. Kevin Smith, a spokesman for John Boehner, tweeted today: “POTUS & his advisers keep calling for a clean debt hike. So when will his party in the Senate pass one?”
This prompted a response from Harry Reid aide Faiz Shakir: “Will you if we do?”
Sorting out the allegedly "moderate" GOP Senators is a good place to start the week. The dynamic may very well be different from the House, where certain Republicans are snarling to teporters about how much they hate Ted Cruz, but when push comes to shove don't seem to be rushing to end the shutdown. Let's test this in the senate too.
It's a shame they brought back all the furloughed Pentagon workers however. That was probably the best leverage the Democrats had against the Republicans on this shutdown. They are, after all, pretty much the only government workers the GOP really values. (Of course, they are the most valued among many Democrats as well. The difference is that Democrats value most other government workers too.)
And so we go into yet another week of furious speculation 24/7 about what's really going on --- something which none of knows or can know and which will only be revealed when it's revealed. Fun times for a blogger. Not so much for the country.
Update: Last week we wrote here about the Williamsburg Accord and the right wing strategy to defund Obamacare. Today the New York Times reveals even more on that subject. It would appear that this happened in plain sight but nobody paid attention, took them seriously or knew what to do about it. And yes, it is funded by huge money, hundreds of millions from the usual suspects. Things go better with Kochs.