BACK in the late 1990s a New York-based magazine ran a hilarious quote from a gorgeous Russian-born socialite who had been overheard expressing dissatisfaction with the monetary terms of her marriage to a wealthy businessman: "Why should he just get to sleep with me? No, I should get something too!" Something similar is going on in Washington at the moment, as one of the parties has begun describing things that were previously understood to be an intrinsic part of the arrangement of governance—not shutting down the government, not defaulting on the national debt—as if they were concessions for which it deserves to be rewarded. Barack Obama's position, repeated over and over for months, has been that allowing the threat of shutdown or default to become a routine part of budget negotiations will fatally cripple the government, and will ultimately guarantee a default sooner or later. But Republicans have refused to believe Mr Obama is serious, or even to acknowledge the argument. Byron York reports an interview with a Republican congressman who says the GOP leadership were sure that by only demanding changes to Obamacare which they regarded as minor, they could get Democrats to approve a continuing resolution. He still cannot seem to accept that Democrats meant it when they said they would not renegotiate Obamacare or the budget under threat of shutdown or default:

"Instead, it's no, we're not going to negotiate, we're not going to negotiate, we're not going to negotiate," the lawmaker said. "Which means effectively you're going to try to humiliate the Speaker in front of his conference. And how effective a negotiating partner do you think he'll be then? You're putting the guy in a position where he's got nothing to lose, because you're not giving him anything to win."

There remains a bit of a question as to whether Republicans' failure to hear the Democratic message is genuine or just a strategic put-on. Jonathan Chait thinks it must be genuine incomprehension, because Republicans would never deliberately have put themselves in their untenable current position. But either way, one reason Republicans are having trouble understanding the reality of the situation is that in the Republican frame, simply letting a sequester-level continuing resolution go through, or raising the debt ceiling to pay the debts that result from that budget, has been redefined as a concession to Democrats. For Democrats, these are not concessions. The sequester-level budget contains cuts to domestic spending so severe that they were supposed to terrify Democrats into negotiating other, more rational cuts; it also contains cuts to defence so severe that they were supposed to terrify Republicans into agreeing to some form of modest tax hikes. The fact that tea-party-era Republicans decided they don't actually care about the defence cuts and have happily allowed the sequester to become the default budget is rather unexpected, but it doesn't change Democrats' frustration with current domestic-spending levels. So it's not surprising that Mr Obama devoted his most recent speech to reminding people that the current continuing resolution would essentially enshrine a Republican budget.

"The bill that is being presented to end the government shutdown reflects Republican priorities," Obama said, addressing federal employees at FEMA in Washington. "It's the Republican budget. The funding levels of this short-term funding bill, called the CR, is far lower than what Democrats think it should be. "Nevertheless Democrats are prepared to put the majority of votes on it to fund the government," he added. "When you hear government not compromising, we're compromising so much we're willing to open the government at funding levels that reflect Republican wishes, that don't at all reflect our wishes."

The problem here is basically that since Democrats have spent the current standoff talking incessantly about avoiding a shutdown or a default, the public, especially Republicans, have come to see this as the Democratic position. For Republicans, this means that simply passing a clean CR or raising the debt limit unconditionally will be seen as a defeat. So they feel backed into a corner. What to do?

Well, here's an idea from a different angle. Peter Beinart suggests that Democrats should drop their opposition to negotiating the budget during a shutdown. Since it turns out the shutdown actually works to the disadvantage of Republicans, rather than Democrats, he thinks Democrats should be eager to open the negotiations now, because this may be the only time when it would be possible to force Republicans to accept some revenue increases as part of a deficit-reduction package.

With the exception of a few fanatics, most congressional Republicans are now looking for a face-saving way out, some way of ending this standoff without looking like they completely caved. A budget deal could offer that. By reopening the government and raising the debt ceiling while also boosting tax revenue and curbing government spending, Republicans could claim they’ve gotten something out of this mess. But that something might well be less than they would have gotten otherwise. That’s especially true now that John Boehner has promised that he’ll prevent a debt default, even if it requires Democratic votes, thus removing the GOP’s best source of leverage. Key Boehner allies are even signaling their willingness to raise revenue in order to extricate themselves from the hole they’ve dug. It’s hard to imagine Republicans going into grand bargain negotiations in a weaker position.

It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure that it's a good idea to open up real budget negotiations right now, for either side; the risk of permanently establishing a system where the United States government goes into shutdown every year while the parties fight over the budget resolution is too great. But I do think it's important for Democrats to remind everyone that they have a series of demands that go far beyond the current sequester budget, including higher infrastructure spending, eliminating tax exemptions, and so on. They need to voice these demands not just for their own sake, but for the sake of Republicans.

The problem Republicans are having right now is an outgrowth of a longer-term issue they've had ever since the 2008 elections: the GOP does not really have much of a policy agenda. For the past five years, the party has been defined almost entirely by everything it is against. Mostly, it is against Barack Obama and whatever he is for. And here, Mr Obama's tendency to play the reasonable moderate sometimes becomes a problem. It's a deep-seated element of Mr Obama's character to step back from disputes, to take things to a meta level, to describe the arguments on both sides and then present his own solution as a compromise, or simply to plead for reasoned debate and a sense of common purpose. There are times when this approach does no one any good.

When Mr Obama stops speaking as a partisan advocate of ambitious liberal goals, adopts his mature school-principal voice, and demands simply that political players adhere to reasonable norms of democratic governance, Republicans are left with nothing to oppose except the reasonable norms of democratic governance. At the moment, Republicans need to be reminded that Democrats do not want the government to reopen and the interest on our debt to be paid. They want the government to reopen, double its infrastructure spending and guarantee pre-school from age three to poor Americans; they want to pay the interest on our debt, then borrow more to run larger deficits right now and for the next couple of years, and lock in higher taxes five to ten years down the road to handle the long-term deficit problem. A fight between Democrats and Republicans over whether or not those are good ideas is a fight America can survive and even thrive with. A fight over whether or not to default on our debt isn't.

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