The right is fittingly giddy over a Wall Street Journal report:
Senior aides to House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have begun discussing a bill being prepared by House Republicans to fund government operations through September. Republicans want the bill to extend operating funds at the lower levels set to kick in Friday and to give more flexibility to the Pentagon to manage its cuts.
Such re-legislated defense-spending "management" will likely assume the form of "evasion," while domestic spending is held accountable for its deficit sins. This was expected by many. Perhaps less expected by some is this pusillanimous reaction to yet more Republican extortion, threatened at an abruptly turned table:
[A]n aide to Senate Democratic leaders said such a measure might be politically difficult for [Democratic] lawmakers to oppose, lest they bear the blame for shutting down the government.
Now I ask you. Do you think Republicans would be pre-palsied about the political consequences of playing hardball? And do you think they'd be leaking to the WSJ--at the beginning of negotiations for Christ's sake--that they're prepared to cave?
It appears the next two years will bear the same relationship to last year's election results that a firecracker bears to a rocket launch. Representative democratic self-governance my ass.