Ted Cruz, the Gift That Keeps On Giving

While Obama has always been great at rope-a-dope, he's sometimes lifted his foot off the gas (mixed metaphor much?) (always alliterating?) a bit early. So of course it took a true blizzard of buffoonery like Ted Cruz and his fellow Tea Partiers to make Obama say fuck it and wait them out until they'd truly worked themselves into a stupor of futility. Ezra Klein writes that if Cruz didn't exist, the Democrats would hafta invent him:

Going forward, not only will Republicans be afraid to shut down the government or threaten the debt ceiling again during this Congress, but if Republicans somehow end up doing it anyway, Democrats will be unafraid of the fight. As Democrats see it, if Republicans want to give a shutdown or a default another shot closer to the 2014 election, well, that's great news for Democratic congressional candidates.

Over the last 24 hours I've seen some Republicans complaining that President Obama and the Democrats are trying to break them. Their anger is misplaced. They should be angry at Ted Cruz for putting Republicans in a position to be broken.

Of course the Tea Party represents a lot of people who refuse to accept losing the Civil War almost 150 years ago, so I doubt they're gonna learn too much from this episode anytime soon.

And Ted, now that this whole thing might finally be behind us, I'd like to offer you the next slot in that most hallowed of stupid politician's dreams: The GOP Batshit Olympics. Good luck. Though from what I can tell so far, you won't need it.