Jack Hickey - you're asking idiots to think the big picture (ie.. the Republicans in the House.)

Not going to happen.

“You can’t explain it very well” to constituents, conceded Senator Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican. “It doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t agree with the shutdown in the first place.”

But, he said federal workers should still get paid.

“We caused this headache. It wasn’t them,” Flake said. “We ought to make them whole.”

What are they about, their nest tee time?

“We caused this headache.” Flake said.

from Web Link

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was quoted last week by Roll Call saying the budget stalemate "isn't some damn game."

National Review quotes Boehner telling GOP members this morning he wants something that "puts points on the board."

This is all about John Boenher saving his job from the Tea Party idiots.

Jack Hickey - You are correct, America is slamming the Republican Party. For context, see the graphs that track changes over the decades, and then focus on the current numbers.

In a word - toilet. Web Link

From the fairly GOP-friendly Gallup (friendly per the 2012 election): Republican Party Favorability Sinks to Record Low --- Falls 10 percentage points from September's 38%

This is a disaster in the making. Like watching a slow motion train wreck. And the democrat party is just sitting there saying: "oh, please, be my guest, go right ahead and destroy yourself"

"But the Republican-led House voted unanimously Saturday, 407-0, to pay those workers retroactively — only after the shutdown ends — which has been the practice in previous shutdowns."

Sounds like all the Democrats were a party to this idiocy, but that is to be expected.

Dems support paying workers that the republicans shut down, then the republicans vote to pay for it also.

Okay.

Dana Milbank in the WaPost:

"At least so far, the standoff has been a political bloodbath for Republicans. And maybe that’s exactly what was needed to right the political system: The effort to gut Obamacare had to crash like this so that Republican leaders and lawmakers would find the courage to stand up to tea party toughs, and so that business leaders would decide to stop funding a small band of right-wing activists whose interests are antithetical to their own."

When will Republicans wake up?

John Boehner quits ahead of the upcoming shutdown. Wotta epic failure.

Shutting down non-essential operations should lead to their elimination. But the blob of bureaucracy only gets BIGGER.