This is just embarrassing.
[This] morning, Republicans blasted Democrats for rejecting the idea of reorganizing the cuts, and cast the [FAA] bill as a necessary legislative fix....
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) ... called the bill a Republican "hostage-taking" ... [but] the easy unanimous consent vote in the Senate belied these complaints, as did the 159 Democrats who voted with Republicans to pass the bill in the House.
And,
The White House said President Obama would sign the bill but condemned the piecemeal approach to alleviating the impact of the sequestration budget cuts.
Republicans, again, held firm. Their victory lap is legitimate. They took a grossly offensive hunk of social injustice and converted it into a lovely little piece of bipartisan legislation, courtesy Democratic cowardice.
The latter inspires Republicans, it motivates them, it's what gets them up in the morning and provides them great hope on long winter nights: Democrats, they know, will always cave--although they'll only do so while issuing stern condemnations of the enormously bad policies they're agreeing to.
There's no secret to Republicans' success. They're simply willing to take withering fire. And why not? It pays. It galvanizes their base, while Democrats are busy demoralizing theirs.
It's just about the only yin-yang thing the two-party system has going for it, or rather, keeps it going.
So now Republicans are the heroes of the day--the heroes of preventing some of the very fallout they inflicted. And you know what? Good for them. They're also the only ones proving that flashing steel balls in politics is neither entirely unfashionable nor completely unworkable.