'IT'S TIME FOR SOMEONE TO ACT LIKE A GROWN-UP'

That's a huge banner headline, in bold print with letters an inch high, over a story about more traditional Republicans lambasting the batshit-crazy Tea Party and its minions such as John Boehner for not facing reality and ending the government shutdown. It's a quote from John Sununu.

Next to the Tea Party, John Sununu is a moderate, centrist voice of reason and conciliation.

Under that banner headline is a big picture of Ted Cruz and John Boehner. Such a picture is not a reassuring sight under such a headline. Well, really, it's just about Boehner. Cruz can continue to act crazy, or to be crazy, if it's the case that it's not an act. It doesn't really matter much what Cruz does. As I've pointed out before on this blog, Boehner can end this shutdown any time he likes. Republican approval ratings plummet rapidly as he refuses to end the shutdown and the days go by. More and more pollsters are saying that, because of other things too but mostly because of this shutdown, the Republicans are in danger of losing their majority in the House in the 2014 midterms, which would mean that the Speakership, which according to insiders is why Boehner follows the Tea Party's lead, would go back to a Democrat anyway. The party that the President doesn't belong to almost always gains seats in congress in midterm elections; the last time this was not the case was in 1998, when the voters punished Congressional Republicans for wasting everybody's time with a silly spectacle, the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Well, this shutdown is much worse than that impeachment, not just in my opinion but also according to all the public opinion polls. The Republicans hurt themselves by coming close to a shutdown in 2011, and they're hurting themselves much worse now. That's the one piece of very good news in all of this stupidity and insanity: it will all be over, in a very big way, at the very latest, when the next Congress is sworn in after the 2014 midterms, and in a bigger way the longer the shutdown lasts and the more default becomes a reality. I'm a Democrat, a partisan in a very big way, as regular readers of my blog have no doubt long since noticed. Still, in this case, concern for humanity in general far outweighs even my party loyalty, and so I hope that the people in the Republican party who, by virtue of contrast with the Tea Party, look like voices of reason, can soon somehow manage to point out the writing on the wall to John Boehner. The sooner the better. Put a clean bill up for a vote, Mr Speaker. Today. The way you should've done before the shutdown, thus preventing the shutdown. Things will only get worse for many people, most assuredly including you, until you do.