How Long?

Exactly how long can the Tea Party Republicans hold the country hostage to their unpopular demands?   Well, for what it’s worth, the Wall Street and Business political donors have headed for the door and thrown in with the President.  That doesn’t bode well for 2014 fundraising. Yes, the corporate overlords are speaking.

Having failed to persuade their traditional Republican allies in Congress to avert a government shutdown, business leaders fear bigger problems ahead, and they’re taking sides with a Democratic president whose health care and regulatory agenda they have vigorously opposed.

President Barack Obama is embracing the business outreach, eager to employ groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street CEOs to portray House Republicans as out of touch even with their long-established corporate and financial patrons.

Yet, the partial closing of the government and the looming confrontation over the nation’s borrowing limit highlight the remarkable drop in the business community’s influence among House Republicans, who increasingly respond more to tea party conservatives than to the Chamber of Commerce.

On Wednesday, Obama is hosting chief executives from the nation’s 19 biggest financial firms. Moreover, the Chamber of Commerce has sent a letter to Congress signed by about 250 business groups urging no shutdown and warning against a debt ceiling crisis that they say could lead to an economically disastrous default.

The divide between some GOP lawmakers and the corporate groups that have helped shape the Republican agenda in the past is partly a result of a legacy of the Wall Street bailouts of 2008-09 and a changing communication and campaign finance landscape that has weakened the roles of corporate donors and of the major political parties.

Interviews with House Republicans from all regions of the country demonstrate the corporate community’s waning clout.

Reid has held a carrot out hoping the tea party bunnies will hop along.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) offered to open negotiations on tax reform Wednesday if Republicans agree to a clean resolution to reopen the government.

Reid sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) pledging to appoint negotiators to a budget conference if House Republicans relent on a six-week funding stopgap.

The budget conference is something Democrats have long sought, however, and the proposal was quickly shot down by Boehner’s office.

Reid offered to include tax reform, which has bogged down in partisan politics this year, on the agenda. The letter suggested that Democrats would be willing to negotiate changes to ObamaCare as part of budget talks as well.

“I commit to name conferees to a budget conference, as soon as the government reopens,” Reid wrote. “This conference would be an appropriate place to have those discussions, where participants could raise whatever proposals — such as tax reform, health care, agriculture, and certainly discretionary spending like veterans, National Parks and NIH — they felt appropriate.”

Boehner’s office said Reid’s terms would give Democrats exactly what they want. “The entire government is shut down right now because Washington Democrats refuse to even talk about fairness for all Americans under ObamaCare,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said. “Offering to negotiate only after Democrats get everything they want is not much of an offer.”

Senate Democrats have repeatedly called for a budget conference, yet Reid’s letter framed it as a concession to end the government shutdown.

Senate Republican conservatives blocked 18 motions by Senate Democratic leaders to begin budget conference talks with the House earlier this year.

Jonathan Chait asks a great question.  What happens when hostage takers don’t actually have a plan or any kind of fall back position?

Okay, first of all, is “Hostage Taking 101” an actual course of study taught to members of the Bush administration? Even if this is a metaphor, it seems like a problematic model for governance. Also, Thiessen argues that Obama will have to give concessions to avoid a debt breach because he cares about the loss of millions of jobs. That seems to imply that Republicans don’t care. After all, if Republicans cared just as much, Obama could be threatening to veto the debt-ceiling hike if Republicans didn’t give him concessions.

Boehner does not seem to share his party’s sociopathic embrace of hostage tactics. Boehner resembles William H. Macy’s character in Fargo, who concocts a simple plan to have his wife kidnapped and skim the proceeds, failing to think a step forward about what happens once she’s actually seized by violent criminals. He doesn’t intend for her to be harmed, but also has no ability to control the plan once he’s set it in motion. In the end, Boehner’s Speakership is likely to end up in the wood chipper, anyway.

The pundit class on TV appears to believe we’re in for a few weeks of this.  Well, alrighty then!!! Meanwhile, more than a few people are feeling the pain.  So, now the House Republicans are trying piecemeal funding.  The Dems are having none of it.  Lots of things are different now.  Here’s some behind the scenes info from the previous deals.

In previous confrontations, this would be the point at which Biden and McConnell rushed in to prevent national peril. It was those two who finalized the 2010 tax deal, the 2011 debt deal and the 2012 “fiscal cliff” pact.

For now, that seems unlikely. McConnell is fighting a two-front reelection battle, with a tea party-backed primary challenger accusing him of selling out conservative principles in his deals with Biden and a younger Democrat accusing him of being cowed by the far right.

McConnell has publicly declared that he won’t step into any talks involving increased taxes or increased spending.

Biden, meanwhile, has spent more time in the past month fanning the flames of his own presidential ambitions. A few weeks ago he attended a high-profile event in Iowa, followed by a trip to South Carolina, two of the early testing grounds of the 2016 campaign.

This has left rank-and-file lawmakers completely unsettled, with no one particularly sure how the process will unfold.

Meanwhile,we get to watch the theatre unfold on TV news.   Who is eventually going to blink?