For the GOP, rightward ho!
The Republican Party is at war with itself. It's divided over how best to shrink the federal budget and how to undo President Obama's healthcare law. It hasn't been notably successful at either, which helps explain why the GOP's standing in the eyes of most voters has plummeted to depths not seen in three decades of modern polling.
None of this was planned, of course; parties don't flirt with political suicide on purpose. But it wasn't accidental either. Behind the GOP crackup over the government shutdown lies a much bigger battle for control of the party.
And the most important actors aren't Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and the tea party members of the House who brought us the government shutdown. The party rift's chief driver is a constellation of hard-line conservative fundraising groups, led in part by a former senator most Americans couldn't pick out of a lineup, Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
When DeMint resigned from the Senate in January to become president of Washington's Heritage Foundation, many were mystified; he was abandoning a safe seat with four years left in his term, all to run an aging conservative think tank across the street.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus-heritage-foundation-jim-demint-20131013,0,7890463.column
Two coments:
1.) This situation was facilitated by the opening of the money spigot in Citizen's United. I said then it would be destabilizing to the two-party consensus, and here we are. It could do the same on the left, but we are not losing, and everybody loves a winner. One thing you can say about the President, he is a winner.
2.) So it's a power struggle now, plain and simple. The gloves are off. I hope we all know which side the Democratic Party will take, so be prepared to see us supporting the Republican realists in their battle.