High-Stakes Calvinball

The shutdown mess continues with no end in sight, mainly because John Boehner is trapped in a hell of his own making.  He claims he won't allow the country to default, but that's exactly what will happen if the House doesn't raise the debt ceiling in two weeks.  The White House is tired of his game of Calvinball, according to Ezra Klein.

As the White House sees it, Speaker John Boehner has begun playing politics as game of Calvinball, in which Republicans invent new rules on the fly and then demand the media and the Democrats accept them as reality and find a way to work around them. 

First there was the Hastert rule, which is not an actual rule, but which Boehner uses to say he simply can't bring anything to the floor that doesn't have the support of a majority of his members. 

The shutdown, the White House argues, is now operating under a kind of super-Hastert rule in which a clean CR is supported by a majority of House Republicans but Boehner has given the tea partiers in his conference an effective veto over what he brings to the floor. 

Then there's Boehner's demand for further concessions on the debt limit, which he now says he can't back down on, but which he made knowing that it would make it harder for him to back down. 

The White House has decided that they can't govern effectively if the House Republicans can keep playing Calvinball. The rules and promises Boehner makes are not their problem, they've decided. They're not going to save him. And that also rules out unusual solutions like minting a platinum coin or declaring the debt limit unconstitutional. The White House doesn't want to break the law (and possibly spark a financial crisis) in order to save Boehner from breaking a promise he never should have made.

So no, the White House isn't going to save Boehner.  But will he fall on his sword in order to save the country from economic catastrophe?

He's a Republican.  What do you think's going to happen?  We've got two weeks, then our economy collapses because Republicans are insane, mean, and stupid.

I'm betting long on disaster futures, myself.