Monday, January 06, 2014

Boehner Won Government Shut-down (III)

Certainly in this one instance, our blog went to the head of the parade. We said on October 18, one day after the government shut-down ended, that House speaker John Boehner won a “big victory”; that “Boehner saved the country and his party.” Five days later, Tim Alberta in the National Journal made a similar claim.

Now more than two months after the October calls, in the latest Atlantic, Molly Ball arrives at the same, remarkably still-considered-newsworthy conclusion, writing:
it’s worth revisiting who actually won the shutdown. Not only do Republicans lead the congressional ballot for the first time in more than a year, they rallied behind the year-end budget deal that funds the government into 2015, and they’ve finally decided to call an end to the pointless repeal-Obamacare votes. Boehner, who spent the year trying and failing to bring his caucus to heel, has finally solidified some measure of control.
In the end, after all the dust settled, did Boehner win the shutdown?
The shutdown took a terrible short-term toll on Republicans, and Boehner took plenty of blame. But it's hard to imagine any of these good outcomes—a yearlong budget agreement, a less unruly House GOP, the possibility of immigration reform—had Boehner not allowed the shutdown to play out the way it did. At the time, it seemed crazy. But in retrospect, it looks like John Boehner won. [emphasis added]
How about that?

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