Democrats seem to be dancing on the fact they can blame Republicans for the shutdown and were doing so weeks ahead of time instead of negotiating with them.
Yes, because it was obvious that the House GOP was intent on using the shutdown as a hostage to gain concessions.
Let me explain the important part in this discussion:
both sides agree that the government needs to be funded. You will find no Republican member of Congress who has stated that
we should not be funding the government. The same goes for the debt ceiling; none of them even believe that the debt limit we already have is enough and we should just make do.
Both sides agree that these things should be passed.Yet, one faction of one party (the minority party, mind you) believes that these items of action,
which both sides agree are critical and necessary, should be used as leverage to extract totally unrelated concessions. It's as if the Democrats said, "We will agree to raise the debt ceiling, but only if we get increased federal funding for abortions."
I don't think that's a smart move on their part. First off, if Republicans are already being blamed, and they are, they have no incentive to give in to anything until they get what they want. The damage has been done.
I don't think that's how
blame works.
If the GOP doesn't back down on their ransom demands and the shutdown continues, they will continue to receive present-tense criticism.
If they do back down and the shutdown ends, that criticism will end (or switch to past-tense, which is much different than present-tense).
Secondly the longer it goes on the more people are realizing that less government is needed. That fits solely into the Republican ideals.
1995 called. They have a
slightly different take on this subject.