To the White House, the shutdown/debt ceiling fight is quite simple, and quite radical: Republicans are trying to create a new, deeply undemocratic pathway through which a minority party that lost the last election can enact an agenda that would never pass the normal legislative process. It's nothing less than an effort to use the threat of a financial crisis to nullify the results of the last election. And the White House isn't going to let it happen.
The Obama administration bristles at the idea that they've been unwilling to negotiate or compromise. They went on a widely covered "charm offensive" back in the spring. The president held multiple dinners with Senate Republicans. He invited over key House Republicans. The meetings were so frequent that the participants were nicknamed "the diner's club."
Nothing came of those meetings. Republicans still weren't willing to talk on taxes. And so the White House grimly accepted that they couldn't move the dial on spending. The CR, they note, funds the government at the GOP's number of $988 billion. It is, itself, a compromise, and one they don't like. But they made it, because they couldn't pass anything else through Congress. And then the Republicans decided to shut down the government because they couldn't pass a delay or defunding of Obamacare through Congress.
That's right folks, all that talk of the President not reaching across the aisles and not being willing to negotiate is all bullshit.
In an attempt to find just the right metaphor to describe the tactics employed by John Bohner and the House Republicans reporter Ezra Klein struck pure gold.
As the White House sees it, Speaker John Boehner has begun playing politics as game of Calvinball, in which Republicans invent new rules on the fly and then demand the media and the Democrats accept them as reality and find a way to work around them.
Yes, yes, that is EXACTLY what they have been doing! As the President has tried to find some way to play fairly and create an environment where perhaps no one side wins everything, but that ultimately the American people emerge victorious, the Republicans have been playing Calvinball!
What? You are unfamiliar with Calvinball?
Well first off you should be ashamed of yourself for not recognizing the iconic game from the best damn newspaper strip EVER created! And second, well second here is your chance to rectify your crippling ignorance.
The only question is, will President Obama continue to allow them to keep changing the rules or will he take a page out of Rosalyn the babysitter's playbook.