Democrats Setting Themselves Up To Cave Twice In Two Weeks On The Same C.R.

<![CDATA[Earlier in the week, I revisited the idea of the Senate GOP contemplating a step they do not want to take, but might have to in order to be the adult party and reopen government. If you missed it, it's a nifty little gimmick where you'd use the nuclear option to change the Senate's standing rules allowing short-term clean continuing resolutions to pass on a simple majority instead of a 60-vote threshold. There's a sound argument for why to do it, and when I wrote that column last weekend, it made sense for the GOP conference to consider it. Events this week, however, have shown that whatever window for the Republicans acting unilaterally to reopen government have now gone out the window. As former Bill Clinton political guru James Carville once said, "When your opponent is drowning, throw him an anvil." To say the Democrats have lost the script on how to message the shutdown would be a gross understatement. Whatever cohesiveness the left-wing political class had in shaping the narrative as a Republican shutdown blew up this week. Polling data has shown that Republican favorability numbers, especially within the House GOP, have skyrocketed since the shutdown began a little more than five weeks ago.Two weeks ago, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the pied piper of the Senate Democratic conference, uttered the infamous words, "Every day gets better for us." For the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the ad wrote itself. ]]>