I'm a republican, and a party officer at that, so I agree with the party most of the time and support their actions most of the time and those don't always overlap. The reason I haven't expressed an opinion about the Shutdown is I don't have an opinion on the shutdown, that's not very unusual, I'm often of two minds about our policies. Mostly I just don't see it as a big deal. After the fact people over-analyze the hell out of this stuff, assign blame or victory, and its mostly made up nonsense. Most people didn't a give a damn about prior shutdowns more than during them and a few weeks afterwards. Pundits come out and rewrite history to imply otherwise. If the President blinks before the House does, then it was a good idea, if they blink before he does, then it wasn't. If the GOP leadership thought with good reason base don available data that they had better than coin flip odds of coming out a head then they are right to do this, if not then not.
Well it definitely didn't help him. There were a lot of factors in play on that administration's various spectacular fumbles. At the time the democrat party was not very cohesive.
- Albert Einstein
King of Cairhien 20-7-2
Chancellor of the Landsraad, Archduke of Is'Mod