government shutdown!

Party like it's 1995!

Wikipedia:

United States federal government shutdown of 1995 and 1996

Clinton's approval rating fell significantly during the shutdown. According to media commentators, this indicated that the general public blamed the President for the government shutdown. However, once it had ended his approval ratings rose to their highest since his election.
...

The shutdown also influenced the 1996 Presidential election. Bob Dole, the Senate Majority Leader, was running for President in 1996. Because of his need to campaign, Dole wanted to solve the budget crisis in January 1996 despite the willingness of other Republicans to continue the shutdown unless their demands were met. In particular, as Gingrich and Dole had been seen as potential rivals for the 1996 Presidential nomination, they had a tense working relationship. The shutdown has also been cited as having a role in Clinton's successful re-election in 1996.

According to Gingrich, positive impacts of the government shutdown included the balanced-budget deal in 1997 and the first four consecutive balanced budgets since the 1920s. In addition, Gingrich stated that the first re-election of a Republican majority since 1928 was due in part to the Republican Party's hard line on the budget. The Republican Party had a net loss of eight seats in the House in the 1996 elections but retained a 228-207 seat majority. In the Senate, Republicans gained two seats.

--------------------------------

I Wish I Could Curse in Fluent Kangaroo by Mistermix

Love that “if” in the second paragraph–have two letters ever done heavier lifting? Anyway, back here on planet Earth, once this thing arrives stillborn on the floor of the Senate, we know that there are between 49-87 Republicans who will join in with Democrats and vote on something sane. The question is whether this vote will happen before or after a government shutdown. The Noam Scheiber piece that DougJ mentioned yesterday says that this vote will occur after a shutdown and he’s probably right.

Scheiber:

Boehner clearly prefers to avoid a government shutdown. He’s spent months figuring out how to do that, fully aware of the political debacle it would entail. Unfortunately, it’s now clear that the only way he can induce the political isolation he typically relies on to prod his caucus into semi-rational action is by shutting down the government and inviting the public backlash he’s been so desperate to avoid. Boehner simply has no other way of talking sense into his people, no other hope of making the House GOP governable. And so, in the end, a shutdown is in Boehner’s interest, too. 

A shutdown perhaps. A debt-ceiling default, not-so-much.

(via DeLong)