Well Shut(down) The Front Door

As Steve M. points out, the government shutdown fight on the GOP side has gone so far off the rails that in order for GOP senators like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Mitch The Turtle to keep from being destroyed by the Tea Party, they are now forced to filibuster the House GOP bill defunding Obamacare:

What's going on in the GOP reminds me of the way a lot of people talk about gang violence. It's often said that in recent years it's been more common for kids in gangs to shoot other kids in gangs (and shoot innocent bystanders) because they just can't walk away from a dispute; if they've been disrespected, the fight inevitably escalates, until somebody gets shot.

That's how the GOP seems right now. Look at the Obamacare fight. John Boehner was disrespected when he was accused of offering a fake vote on defunding of the health care law, and so he gave in to Senator Ted Cruz's demand for a House vote on a provision that would really defund Obamacare, after which Boehner and other House Republicans attacked Cruz for saying that he and his allies couldn't really block Obamacare in the Senate.

People who looked at the likely course of the Obamacare-defunding proposal in the Senate agreed that, for complicated reasons, Cruz was correct and there was no real opportunity to stage a true filibuster of a bill with full funding of Obamacare. The only filibuster opportunity requires Cruz and his allies to block a bill that includes the defunding proposal they favor.

And if they don't take that opportunity, the Tea Party will eliminate them.  Only total opposition to President Obama and the Democrats counts now for those who opted to ride on the back of the Tea Party tiger.  Unless they do everything in their power to destroy our country's economy and turn President Obama's second term into ashes (along with the rest of 90% of the country) then the Tea Party will replace them with someone who will.

So this is where we are, weeks away from what could be the start of another economic disaster that will almost certainly put us into economic recession is not a full-blown depression (should the Tea Party cause the loss of America's credit rating) and the vast majority of Republicans are okay with that, because they think you will blame President Obama.

Give in to their political demands or face guaranteed financial ruin.  That sounds like terrorism to me.  Why don't we call it what it is, folks?