It is well documented that Obama decided after the 2011 debt limit debate to no longer negotiate over the raising the debt limit. He thought it created a bad precedent and would lead to endless brinkmanship, which is bad for the country.
What we actually witnessed was Obama's resolve to carry out that policy. He told the House GOP that it was exactly what he would do. And he did it.
And remember, the votes were always there in the House to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. But in September, Republicans changed the House rules to allow a minority to keep bills from reaching the floor for a vote. This rule placed the sole power to bring a bill to the House floor for a vote in the hands of the majority leader. What is truly extraordinary here is that RePugs are still supporting a party that attempts to openly circumvent the democratic process because they lost a vote on legislation 3 years ago. And then they blame the president for not negotiating with that group. That it unbelievable. Thankfully, the moderate portion of the House GOP had enough sense to realize that Americans saw through their extortion scheme and forced the leadership to back down.
I applaud Obama for doing exactly what needed to be done in the situation. Because of the way Obama handled this, I doubt you will see the GOP trying this again. That is a good result in my book.
Another irony is that after their demands for repeal of the ACA fell flat, Republicans began to blame Democrats for not compromising on the budget. Yet, looking at the Congressional Record, it is clear that the Senate did compromise when passing the CR. The CR provided discretionary funding levels that were $80 billion below the amount agreed to in the 2011 debt compromise with Republicans and only $19 billion more than the 2014 Ryan budget. But the GOP wouldn't bring that deal to a vote because they wanted nothing less than the complete repeal of the ACA. So, actually, the only group who were willing to accept any compromise at all were the Democrats. But we have learned not to expect that RePugs will pay attention to silly things like facts.
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