America's Pooey pants moment.

One of my favourite teachers introduced me to the concept of a pooey pants moment. She described how her son in an A-level exam had described Lenin's position after the October revolution as such. He got an A in that exam and not unreasonably. While the term is crude it does rather accurately reflect the nature of having a military of around 500 dedicated amateurs (the red guards) against standing remnants of the Tsarist military numbering about 20,000 men who have much more material and expertise. On top of that even the majority of the left intelligentsia / political class that had emerged following the February revolution opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power. The Bolsheviks eventually won out, mostly because of how badass a dude Trotsky was, although there were of course other factors. Nonetheless early on in the civil war if I were in Lenin's position my pants would likely have been rather pooey.

But why should America's pants collectively be pooey? The absurd argument over the raising of the debt ceiling of course!. As you are likely aware this is not a thing most other countries have, it should be linked to the budget with the amount of debt the nation takes out linked to the budget that was passed. But America is exceptional

But others have commented on this and far better explanations exist elsewhere. This shouldn't be a pooey pants moment but it is because of the nature of Republican Party at this moment in time. 538 lays out the nature of this very well.

Most commentators and economists and so on aren't very worried about a US default, technical or otherwise because logically it is very much in the GOP's interest to raise the debt ceiling, sure they'll push for cuts that'll hurt the poor, that's what they do, but at the end of the day they'll compromise and the ceiling will be raised. The problem is the Tea party is so far to the right and so ideologically driven it doesn't appear to be looking to its' own (or big business's) self interest anymore. Indeed Nate Silver demonstrates that the ideological gap between the House GOP and GOP voters is bigger than the gap between GOP and Democratic voters.

So why are they so far out in to right field? Do they have some strategy to bring down Obama that the mainstream media hasn't picked up on? It could possibly be, but as Silver points out it is very difficult to predict who could win out of this. Given how Gingrich's shutdown in 1995-6 didn't play out well for the GOP, either their strategists have some amazing insights everyone is lacking this time around or they're not behaving in a sound manner.

So have the lunatics taken over the asylum? Is it time to poo our pants and eat the barrel of a gun? Well maybe but the GOP's behaviour isn't quite as mad as it may seem or at least it isn't aimless madness. The article about the ideological gap between the House GOP and GOP voters is mildly misleading because the gap between likely GOP voters and the House is much smaller. As this third article explains the GOP are not in a position to compromise. Jonny linked it me last week and my only response was welp.

Essentially the GOP is seemingly on the ropes it has haemorrhaged the middle ground to the Democrats (whatever the hell the middle ground in the US even is these days) and the only thing that allowed them to win so comprehensively in the 2010 midterms was a motivated minority of extreme right wingers and the apathy of the larger more moderate groups of voters. They are just trapped in a morton's fork (Catch 22) situation, they can't alienate the Tea Party because if they do they seemingly face extinction but appeasing the Tea Party drives them further from the mainstream and leads them to take absurdly hard lines on issues they have no public support on.

Will the debt ceiling be raised in some form before August 2nd? Probably. The calm assurance it will happen is definitely misplaced however.