Conservatives Learned The Wrong Lessons From The Shutdown Debacle

[Capt. Obvious]

For a certain block of House conservatives, the ones who drove Speaker John Boehner toward a government shutdown and near-default against his will, the lesson of the last few weeks isn't that they overreached. Not that they made unachievable demands, put their leadership in an impossible position, damaged their party's position with the public and left a deep uncertainty about whether the GOP conference can recover and legislate.

No, what they're taking away from the 2013 crisis is: They didn't go far enough.

They aren't angry with Speaker John Boehner for ultimately capitulating to Democratic demands. They're frustrated with their more mainstream colleagues who put him in that position.

....

It was reflected in the way that conservative members explained away their pending surrender before the votes were taken Wednesday. The problem wasn't that they'd taken an unpopular, strategically questionable position, they said. It's that they didn't effectively communicate their position to the American public. The firm belief that the American public shares the same view of Obamacare that they do, that it is a disaster that needs to be stopped, remains omnipresent among hard-line conservatives.

They might have lost the battle, but they'll win the war. They just need to find a way to get people to listen.

Oh good, we're gonna keep going through this!

[LisaLynne]

1. The Republicans did the same thing after the last presidential election.

For a brief moment, I thought that they realized that the majority of this country isn't interested in their regressive policies anymore and are moving on. However, that passed quickly and they went to the whole, "We aren't getting our message out! People really want this stuff!" They really are not living in reality. They are going to delude themselves into oblivion.

[sendero]

2. The Tea Party..

... fucktards live in a Libertarian echo chamber, one where they don't notice the abject failure of their "deregulation" stance (the entire banking and derivatives crisis, ongoing and a DIRECT RESULT of banking and futures deregs) of their "give all power to the captains of industry and they will do the right thing" (proven laughably wrong time and time again Galt my ass) myth, and frankly just about everything they believe about business and economics.

Fortunately, the rest of the country isn't buying their bullshit any more as the proof is in the pudding.

Their number one numero uno ultimate concern RIGHT NOW is the federal debt. Why? Everyone with 2 brain cells to rub together gets that this debt will never and can never actually be repaid in whole. What will really happen is that the dollar will continue to be devalued as a back door payment of the debt. Now, this has some negative effects for everyone, but it has far and away greatest effect on current holders of great wealth. Yes, that is what this is all about IMHO, the fact that sociopathic multibillionaires don't want to see their holding devalued by a few percent. There you have it.

[SamYeager]

3. Remember after the last shutdown? Same thing.

They decided they had to impeach after that debacle.

[winter is coming]

4. Yeah, that's probably going to be their next cunning plan.

[Agnosticsherbet]

5. Each time they had their ass handed to them, it was because they weren't Conservatvie enough

After they won in 2010, it was because the nation wanted them to be more Conservative.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.