Just because the Republicans didn’t actually win any policy concessions doesn't mean that they’ll never try this again

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POLITICAL SCENE: WINNERS AND LOSERS OF THE SHUTDOWN
By Matthew McKnight, October 17, 2013



We all knew that the government shutdown was going to be bad, and, looking back, it still hurts. “There are no winners,” Hendrik Hertzberg says. “The country has been damaged by this, the government has been damaged, the credit of the United States has been damaged, the international standing of the United States has been damaged. And what for?”

But now that it’s over, we can get back to running a fully functioning government, right? Perhaps not. On this week’s Political Scene podcast, Hertzberg, John Cassidy, and Ryan Lizza talk with host Amelia Lester about the shutdown’s aftermath. Lizza warns Democrats not to “think that because the Republicans didn’t actually win any policy concessions here that they’ll never try this again—that the days of this kind of brinksmanship are over.”

The political incentives for extreme conservatism are too strong for moderation, Cassidy says. “Can anybody run from the Republican moderate side of the Party and have more credibility than Mitt Romney did?” It can be fun to look ahead to the next election cycle, but, if we want to find more obstruction from the right, we may only have to wait until January for the next budget fight.
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