It's become increasingly obvious to me, as I watch the GOP's shifting tactics, that they plan to take us into default. You can tell by their every move. They pass legislation that has no hope of being approved by the senate, they support forming committees that wouldn't even be able to agree on conferees by October 17th, their public statements are now completely devoid of actual demands. They're now doing a PR blitz to insist that any default wouldn't be bad, and if it is, it's Obama's fault. It's an attempt to control the story they know is coming, because they plan on making it happen. They want a default.
And when you sit down and think about it, it is a completely logical position for them.
See, it's literally the last real move available to them in the Grand Game of US Politics. Defaulting is the only hope they have left to save their party.
They see the polling numbers we see, they can read the demographic trend data, and they do know how elections are trending. The GOP is in a death spiral, and the leadership knows it. It can't re-position itself as less (insert insane right wing position) without losing the lunatic fringe that only cares about that issue. They can't gain any more support by embracing those issues either, because any right wing fringe element that isn't voting GOP now will never vote GOP for pathological reason. And the base they do have is becoming outnumbered and surrounded. Eventually, they will splinter into a couple new parties, and one of them will become the second 'Major' party in US Politics.
The problem is the current people in the GOP leadership will not get to be in charge of that. And everyone associated with the Old GOP, with the few exceptions of those who choose the right successor party, will be forced to the back bench, if not out of politics. And so we come to the crux of the issue.
The GOP's leadership is taking a page from the McCain playbook. They need a 'game changer'. They need to take politics to a place where it's never been, because all other paths take them to extinction. They need to Default.
We all assume a default will be bad on a lot of levels, because we can make logical inferences. However, since we have never been to the land of Default before, we don't know what the political ramifications are. It might reset political views. It might nuke all the political parties approval ratings to 0%, thus making them even again. The public might blame the president and democrats for not caving. Who knows? The only thing the GOP is sure of is they are doomed, politically, if they follow any form of political conventional wisdom.
The only move left is to flip the board across the room and let the pieces land where they may.
Please tell me I'm wrong, because I have never wanted to be convinced I am wrong more in my life. God help us all if I'm right about this.