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Fighting for the Sake of Fighting

Byron York reports that House Republicans aren’t budging: As the partial government shutdown enters its third day, many House Republicans are determined to keep fighting, even though they see no plausible way out of the current impasse, because they’ve come so far they cannot imagine backing down now [bold mine-DL]. “I think there’s a sense […]

Byron York reports that House Republicans aren’t budging:

As the partial government shutdown enters its third day, many House Republicans are determined to keep fighting, even though they see no plausible way out of the current impasse, because they’ve come so far they cannot imagine backing down now [bold mine-DL]. “I think there’s a sense that for us to do a clean CR now — then what the hell was this about?” one Republican House member told me. “So I don’t think it’s going to end anytime soon.”

Of all the bad reasons to persist in a failed effort, this has to be one of the worst. Continuing in a fight simply to avoid the embarrassment of admitting that the fight was always pointless is absurd. There are no good ways “out” for House Republicans at this point, but there are better and worse ways to react to the failure of the defunders’ gambit. The better thing to do is to acknowledge that the gambit didn’t work and couldn’t have worked, relent, and choose their fights more carefully in the future.

There is one plausible way for the GOP to get “out” of this mess, and it seems to be the one that their leaders are going to ignore. York explains:

Of course, the House GOP leadership could always decide to propose a “clean” continuing resolution that doesn’t touch Obamacare, a move that insiders estimate would win the support of perhaps 175 of the House’s 232 Republicans. With Democratic support, a clean measure would win overwhelming passage. But the leadership is apparently dead set against that, at least as the shutdown begins Day Three.

As York keeps noting in his report, Republicans have run out of ideas for what they should do next, so it’s not as if they have some backup plan for victory that they’re waiting to spring on us. They are stuck in a losing position that they could leave tomorrow, but they will apparently insist on holding that position despite the fact that they know it does them no good. Instead of correcting their initial mistake and cutting their losses, they are determined to “fight” now simply for the sake of fighting.

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