Progressive prof says baggers dropped ball

[bruce MN]

Took on the wrong issue. Says, essentally, that he's obsessed with being Clinton redux by further trimming the New Deal/Great Society and becoming a hero with the plutocracy. The baggers took on the GOP originated idea of exchanges and accountability in health care delivery and payment and ignored that he wants to shred the safety net every bit as much as Clinton did and they do. That he wants the Simpson-Bowles solution adopted. The GOP House could have pulled that off and gotten enough DINO Dem Senators to go aalong that we could have had Greek or Hungarian styled austerity in place by now. But the plutos that played the bagger rubes like a piano want the full faith markets to keep swimming, want true believer Ryans instead of middle class populist Bidens close to power so they didn't stop them. Bill Black fingers it perfectly; http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/bill-black-the-tea-partys-tactical-brilliance-and-strategic-i...

[r3020]

The establishment GOP hates conservatives as much as you do. They want power and will do anything to keep power in Washington. There can never be a movement to reduce the size of government. Simple as that.

[Canuck_2]

You might enjoy reading Neil Macdonald too.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/u-s-shutdown-climbdown-the-triumph-of-the-republican-surrender-monkeys-1.2101...

Where else but modern America could someone like Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, the Tea Party champion from Texas, accomplish what he just did.

This is a man who, having led a spectacularly pointless rebellion against his own party's leadership, declared a "remarkable victory" when the government shutdown clanked and wheezed to its inglorious end Wednesday afternoon.

[BA Deere]

I honestly don't know what the "baggers" were expecting.Obama wasn't going to sign anything refunding his legacy, he's a lameduck and I really don't think he would mind the crisis that a US debt default would cause. He would at best have an excuse to print more money stimulus and at worst martial law? Either one is no skin off the nose of a lameduck that wants to fundamentally change the American way of life.