This won't be that long of a diary, I just want to bring something to the attention of the community that I believe is being missed.
They will trigger default no matter what! Guess what, John Boehner and the republicans never intended to come to some sort of grand bargain. The just wanted to make it look like they were negotiating in good faith and as soon as it appeared they were close to a deal and ever closer to the deadline, the plan was and has always been to walk away, blame it on the president and then introduce a poison pill of a bill that they knew no one could ever really accept. Then they back off of that and introduce a less draconian bill as that at the very last minute that would allow them to move the date of default to next year during the election.
More after the fold.
What a number of people miss is that a large majority of the republican base and virtually all of the tea party base believes that we are on the march towards socialism.
THEY REALLY REALLY REALLY BELIEVE IT!!!
That belief is the controlling factor in this whole episode. They will in fact trigger a default if there is even a smidgen of a chance that Obama will get elected again and they will do it because they believe it is the lesser of two evils by far.
They however prefer to do it next year after the bill they introduce is enacted and causes much of Obama's base to turn against him while the impact of such severe spending cuts force the economy back into recession and unemployment to go even higher than it is today.
Thats why they have to let it happen now, where Obama and the Dems are not embroiled in an election year and have the chance to control the narrative going into the election year.
There is no real difference between someones beliefs leading them to massacre dozens of people at a youth camp in Norway and leading them to allow the worlds largest economy to default when both are driven by a larger fear of a fallout that is much worse. Yes both mindsets are deranged and baseless, but that doesn't really matter because they truly believe it and will act on that fear no matter what believing it to be for the greater good.