Winning

Was it worth it?  Yes.  Rolling over is never a strategy.  There was going to be a showdown over debt anyway so an impasse was certain.  But it's hard to fight against the President, Senate, most of the media, Hollywood and international bodies, especially if your own army is divided. 

Handicapping the players, well Dirty Harry Reid acted predictably, figuring he could stonewall the divided GOP caucus and force them to cave, and he played that role brilliantly.  If the president was involved it was hard to tell where, but his non-involvement was a chosen strategy.  Whatever it takes in the craven march to our Euro-socialist future.  Boehner actually showed more resolve than I figured he would but in the end his hands were tied.  He wasn't going to blow everything up to please the likes of Sean Hannity.  Live to fight another day.    

But people like John McCain deserve to be addressed directly:  Sir--just shut the fork up about any financial matters from here forward please.  You screwed it up in 2008 and here you are again blabbing with blinders on.  If you feel the need to jab your fellow Republicans in the back do it to your bathroom mirror.  If you feel the need to talk publicly, stick to talking about terrorists.  Your political enemies do not want to be friends with you, k?  They want to skewer you with hot pokers and leave you naked and cuckolded in the street holding a sign saying 'racist'.  OK, my friend?  Thanks.  

As to the overall fight and what it means, I can't say it any better than the White House Dossier guy...

I realize that sounds quite delusional to many people, particularly here in Washington. But it makes total, absolute sense.

The muttering class Inside the Beltway is very pleased with itself: The doomed Tea Party strategy is foundering on the shoals of idiocy, just like they said it would. The Republican “brand” has been downgraded yet again. America is looks foolish abroad: “The world has reacted mostly with disbelief that a superpower could fall into such dysfunction,” wrote the New York Times today. Reasonable people will soon be back in charge so they can do reasonable things in a reasonable way without all these Tea Party lunatics stirring up trouble.

Let me tell all of you something: THIS COUNTRY IS ALREADY IN A STATE OF TOTAL DYSFUNCTION, AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.

A state of dysfunction, mind you, brought to you by the “reasonable” people who have been striking deals for years that have created $17 trillion in debt and a possibly irreversible degree of Socialism that is lobotomizing our tradition of independent thinking and creativity, crippling free enterprise, and carving the soul out of the moral, God-fearing ethic that has made this nation the greatest on earth.

The shaky status-quo moderates who helped get America to this point will not be remembered well in the course of history.