Orange Hell

What'll it be, John Boehner?  Hero or goat?

Despite his backroom pleas and carefully crafted strategies, Boehner — a veteran of the shutdown battles of the mid-1990s — was unable to convince a hard-line faction of House GOP lawmakers that they should save their legislative brawls for the debt ceiling fight, where Boehner thought he could drag President Barack Obama to the negotiating table. 

Unless there is a last-minute deal, the U.S. government will shut down Monday at midnight, immediately furloughing hundreds of thousands of federal workers. The vast majority of public and private polling shows that Boehner’s House Republicans will get blamed for the stalemate. Boehner and his top aides know it — after all, it was the speaker who privately warned his leadership team that this shutdown could cost him his majority. 

It’s a pivotal moment for Boehner, perhaps the biggest crisis of his speakership, and he’s heading into it with a weak hand. The best Boehner can hope for is a draw. At worst, he could be endangering his troubled 17-seat majority as well as his own hold on the speaker’s gavel.

Once again the fate of America depends on John Boehner's ability to not be the worst House Speaker in modern US history.  

Good luck with that.

Boehner’s options, however, are dictated — and significantly limited — by his conservative flank. Hard-line Republicans, like Reps. Tom Graves of Georgia and Jim Jordan of Ohio, are keeping their powder dry, saying they will decide how to proceed when the Senate reacts to the latest House funding measure. 

In public and private, many of these conservatives are spoiling for a fight. On conference calls and in conversations on the House floor, many conservatives say they need a shock to the political system to have a chance of extracting something from Obama. This isn’t a government shutdown, they say, but rather a slowdown. They are betting the American public won’t turn on House Republicans like they did in 1996, when the GOP lost nine seats, and President Bill Clinton won a second term in the White House.

The lunatic asylum expects Obama to cave, 100%.  So what happens when enough moderate Republicans come up to Boehner and say "With the Democrats, we have enough votes to tell the Tea Party to go to hell.  We have a deal. Will you bring it up for a vote?"

What will he do?

What do you think he'll do?  That he'll have the moral conviction to do the right thing and pay the piper for his own blunders?

When do Republicans ever do that?

We'll find out.  But don't hold your breath.