Who Is To Blame?

In the last week, so many people have written about the looming government shutdown and answered the question, who is to blame? The obvious answer, the GOP, is the right one as well, but that hasn't prevented some GOP House Reps. to blabber on about how Harry Reid and Obama are shutting down the government. That's just not the truth and I think Josh Marshall's post about this latest episode of brinkmanship is one of the best reads on the ridiculous GOP and their inability to accept that this whole "defund and defeat Obamacare" strategy was already rejected in November of 2012. 

Money Quote: 

For all the ubiquity of political polarizing and heightened partisanship, no honest observer can deny that the rise of crisis governance and various forms of legislative hostage taking comes entirely from the GOP. I hesitate to state it so baldly because inevitably it cuts off the discussion with at least a sizable minority of the political nation. But there's no way to grapple with the issue without being clear on this single underlying reality. Sufficient evidence of this comes from 2007 and 2008 when Democrats won resounding majorities in Congress and adopted exactly none of these tactics with an already quite unpopular President Bush. This is the reality that finally brought Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, two of DC's most arbiters of political standards and practices, fastidiously sober, even-handed and high-minded, to finally just throw up their hands mid-last-year and say "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem."

Read the rest here.