I was just listening to Wolf Blitzer explain that Republicans realize they’re getting killed in the world of public opinion but keeping the government closed and threatening a debt default. But they’re worried, he explains, that if they open the government and take the debt default off the table they’ll lose a lot of their leverage to force things like repealing Obamacare, cutting Social Security, Medicare and other similar stuff.

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It’s getting hard to keep track of the hostage metaphors here, but if I have this right then the latest from Boehner means the House GOP is keeping both hostages — government shutdown and debt limit — but has agreed not to shoot the debt limit in the head for another six weeks.