I’ve long held the position that Republicans are after nothing other than chaos, and a wrecked economy so that they could claim that the economy failed during a Democratic Presidency. The ACA fight is a pretext. Economist say that most pernicious and long term effects of a default are already being felt in a steep erosion of trust in American bonds as a safe haven. As Delaware Dem has pointed out here, the country is under attack.
Given that reality, President Obama will be forced to do something that he doesn’t want to do.
Andrew Sullivan is (appropriately, I think) upset about this:
…I come back to the analogy of a cold civil war. The reluctance of the South to pay the debts of the nation which led to the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of the national debt. It seems to me that if the House GOP really does intend to destroy the American and global economy, to throw millions out of work, to make our debt problem far worse in a new depression … just to make a point about Obamacare, then at some point, Obama, like Lincoln, must preserve the republic.
But no president should ever want to take that position – because it represents the collapse of the American polity. But we are in collapse. If the House pushes the country into default this week, there is no workable American polity left. The most basic forms of collective responsibility will have been forsaken for almost pathological ideological purism and cultural revolt.