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.
Thanks for the response Isaac. With the power the media has, pundits coming out about past events, can potentially help sway current events, help affect who blinks first, which may be part of the reason why they offer opinions.
It will be interesting to see who blinks first, from what I've seen of Obama's presidency, he seems to have had a tendency to blink first in the past, which may make him more or less likely to blink in this instance, than if he hadn't had that history.
Certainly a gamble for GOP, but I think that even if Obama blinks first, there is still a risk that it will overall backfire on the republicans.
Regarding the democrats under Jimmy Carter, I think from what I've read of american political history (I tend to like to read odd things ) differing parties at times have had problems with cohesiveness, and with the Tea Party, the GOP seems to be at risk in that regard.