About 72 hours from the sequestration order, we’re approaching the “well, now what?” chapter in this particular fight where the big Obama cave conservatives are hoping for doesn’t happen. After that, it’s my suspicion that reality will begin to set in and pressure will build on Republicans to compromise.

I’ll get to my theory of a GOP cave in a minute, but I want to emphasize, contra Matt Yglesias, that its mechanics don’t really depend on the superiority of the Democrats’ message per se. Read More

We can argue over who is responsible for the sequester — though between two co-equal branches of government, who passed and signed the legislation, the point of that seems limited. But that doesn’t take away from the clarifying moment we’re witnessing, the scale of which we likely haven’t seen since the government shutdowns of the mid-90s. Republicans have run on big across-the-board spending cuts for literally decades. Read More