I happen to believe what we're witnessing is the last desperate throes of this moribund beast known as the GOP. I think that it's culminating towards a shutdown and/or debt default (one or the other or perhaps both) as a way for the GOP to fulfill their emotional need to inflict punishment on the country for rejecting them. It's nothing less than lashing out in a last, desperate attempt to stop progress.
They must have their pound of flesh, and so I belive they will bring it past the brink. I also believe that they will fail to achieve anything except causing pain and reaping the blame.
They will have their shutdown, or default, or both, and then, like in '96, they will have to relent, having achieved nothing. Obamacare will not be defunded. Period. Despite the pain they will have inflicted on this country. And when they wake up frome their rampage of destruction they have wrought, they will see what they have achieved, and look at their empty bloodsoaked hands, and then they will start to come to the crushing realization that they have less than nothing to show for their efforts.
The supporters, the rank and file will look up and see Obamacare enacted, and being implemented, and say "now what?"
They will be demoralized. Lost. Crushed and empty.
And then the finger pointing will begin. And then the knives will come out. And then the cannibalistic feeding frenzy will start.
The internal bitter acrimony that will be generated by the GOP's failure to stop Obamacare from being enacted will reverberate through the GOP in the form of a cannibalistic backstabbing orgy the likes of which have never before been witnessed in the annals of political history.
The build up has been immense. The expectations spectacular. The hyperbole profound. The rhetoric unmitigated and it's all culminating.
They are accelerating and careening towards this point, there's no let up, and they are going to fail, utterly. But they are ramping up the energy into very dangerous territory, because when they fail, this energy will need to be dissipated and directed. Directed right into a cannibalistic, backstabbing feeding frenzy of dashed hopes and bitter acrimony.
And lo, it will be glorious to behold, as long as you don't get splattered with the entrails, I suppose.