The Republican Party's strategy of shutting down the government and threatening the default of our debt was really stupid. This is especially true now that Speaker Boehner decided to cave and accept a continuing resolution to fund the government and an extension of the debt limit -- without any changes to Obamacare or any right-wing policies the GOP was seeking in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. For one, the strategy did not achieve GOP aims. Obamacare went live anyway because the main components of the law are not affected by the regular congressional appropriations process. The law actually became more popular in the meantime as seven percent more of Americans, than before the shutdown, said they liked the law. The eventual Senate deal does not even change the law at all except to require income verification from the HHS -- something the letter of the law permits already. Meanwhile, the Republicans' refusal to accept a clean CR and a clean raise of the debt ceiling (which, by the way, was already a compromise from Democrats who had sought repeal of the sequester) led to their poll numbers nosediving to their lowest levels ever according to Gallup and NBC News/Wall Street Journal polling.
The most fascinating result of the poll though was that by a 52%-46% margin, the public said they favored a more activist government -- a government that "does more, not less." In June, the question of "more vs. less" was a 48%-48% tie in the same exact poll. Political scientists analyzed in 1995 that the shutdown would cause many Americans to see the benefits of government as they saw all the vital federal agencies that affect people's lives closed. This was proven true again this year. This fact deals a huge blow to the GOP's overriding ideology of embracing shrinking and diminished government services as well; in fact, some Republican members of Congress, like Sen. David Vitter, celebrated that some agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency, were closed. The public is not celebrating though. Lastly, the short-term political future for the GOP looks awful now too as polling from Public Policy Polling and other institutes indicate that a Democratic takeover of the House -- something that was unthinkable months ago -- now appears at least slightly more likely than before the shutdown. Interestingly, few political observers now doubt that President Obama will be only the second president since the Civil War to see his party gain House seats in the sixth year of his presidency (President Clinton in 1998 was the first one). It appears that Obama's refusal to capitulate to GOP demands -- something that many fellow progressives were a bit pleasantly surprised to see -- has not been the political loser that several GOP Congressmen claimed it would be.
So, in the end, the whole ordeal was a huge waste of time for a Republican Party that could have used that time to highlight problems with the Obamacare rollout - as Ezra Klein pointed out on MSNBC last week - and they could have utilized the summer public outrage over the NSA to actually live up to their "smaller government" rhetoric (though it would have been hypocritical given their support of President Bush's counterterrorism policies). More importantly, this shutdown was unfortunately a huge waste of time and waste of resources for the country as GDP declined and our credit rating was put on negative watch by a credit agency. It is laughable to see the Republicans in Congress claim that they care so much about economic growth, as opposed to ostensibly a lack of care from the President, when it is their brinksmanship and budget cutting, not Obama's stimulus law or health care law, that have again and again hampered job growth, eviscerated the public sector, and caused worldwide consternation regarding our political system and economic health. The debate of the last two weeks, as well as the continual budget battles since 2011, are also a huge waste of time because they distract us from talking about the kind of investments in infrastructure and education that our country badly needs or the economic inequality or broken immigration system that persist without serious comprehensive reform.
If the 2012 election was not a wake up call for the GOP, perhaps this episode will be. Predictions of the "end of the GOP" are overblown and as long as some conservative public policy ideas like balancing the budget and shrinking regulations remain relatively popular, the GOP will still have a shot at recapturing the support of the public. For now though, they have really, really hurt themselves badly and wasted our time, plain and simple.
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