So far Republicans picking through the rubble of the shutdown debacle have identified two main culprits for their defeat: the media and moderates within their ranks.
The second of those is the richest because the lesson learned for these Republicans isn’t that they overreached, it’s that they didn’t go far enough. A lack of ideological purity and true commitment to the cause is what sank Republicans. If they had only held together tighter, then Obama and the Democrats would have blinked. It’s an echo of post-election analysis in 2008 and 2012. If only John McCain and Mitt Romney had been more conservative, the White House would have gone Republican, too.
Seeing other “culprits” in the conservative stabbed in the back narrative? Flag them to us by email via the “Comments & News Tips” address toward the top of the page.
If only Republicans had remained unified, this all would have turned out so much better.
The President will appear shortly to make remarks on Senate passage of the debt deal. Watch.
By a final vote of 81-18, the Senate gave final passage to the bipartisan debt limit deal that will avoid default and end the government shutdown. The House will take it up later this evening.
Over at TPMCafe: How To Fix The ‘College Women Need To Stop Drinking’ Narrative.
The Senate is about to vote on the debt limit deal, in a series of two votes in the next few minutes.
As part of the deal, the Senate just agreed by unanimous consent to go into a budget conference with the House — something Democrats have been seeking for months, but which Republicans had rejected until just before the government shutdown, when they switched strategies.
Once the Senate passes the debt deal, it will go to the House, where a vote is expected later this evening.
You can read the bill here. More on what it contains here and here.
Ted Cruz, who says the shutdown/debt limit resolution is a “terrible deal,” went on conservative radio and likened Senate Republicans to an “air force bombing our own troops.”