Whose Game to Play
MichaelGerson’s  argument that Senator Ted Cruz has chosen the wrong battlefield because his commitment to obstructionism has led him to conclude that not only is compromise cowardly, but strategy is as well.  Gerson argues persuasively that the Cruz ‘strategy’ is likely to ‘rescue Obamacare,’ the opposite of the result Cruz claims to seek.  Now that is leadership.

Here is how Gerson put it, highlighting the importance of venue, that is deciding whose game we are playing, in determining the outcome of political conflicts:

‘The outcome is predetermined by the choice of the battlefield. Any legislative effort to defund Obama’s central domestic achievement would provoke a presidential veto, requiring two-thirds of the Senate and House to override. This goal has a Dewey Decimal System problem: It is located not in political science but in science fiction.

An actual shutdown of the government — the only realistic outcome of Cruz’s strategy — works for conservatives only if voters generally blame it on Obama’s intransigence. So: Americans would need to side with a distrusted faction of a disdained institution, which is pursuing a budgetary maneuver that even many Republican lawmakers regard as aggressive, desperate and doomed. “This is misleading the conservative base,” says Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., “because it’s not achievable.” Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has called it the “dumbest idea” he has ever heard.’

Even Republican leaders are stating publicly that this ‘strategy’ is misleading and will not work.

If Gerson is correct, is this the first sign of an eventual Democratic Party take-over of Congress?  That would be the market solution to what John McCain calls the ‘wacko birds’ in his own party. Further, if Ruth Marcus is correct that confronting the reality of the budget cutting slogans these ideologues have been slinging is already compelling them to back down, we might be seeing just a glimpse of a promise of an actual return to governance.

Rachel Maddow's blog is always great; it is particularly great today, highlighting one (of many) trends in how we report the news reflecting the two media biases that matter most:  commercialization bias and official bias.  Pointing out that the NYT, WPost, Politico and the Daily Show all hyped the (made up) IRS scandal and then stopped covering the story when the evidence proving the accusations false came out, Maddow concludes...

'And why does this matter? Aside from the fact that accountability should still have some meaning in American politics? Perhaps because misguided coverage of a phony controversy led the public to believe President Obama, the White House, and the IRS itself were responsible for serious misdeeds. The taint of "scandal" remains, for no reason other than the political world told the public about allegations, but decided the evidence to the contrary wasn't important.'