Democrats won't cave on Obamacare -- but on everything else...?

I am getting weary of progressives' reflexive head-shaking over Republican "craziness" and mainstream reporters' warnings that the GOP may commit electoral suicide by ceding policy to their most extreme members.

Perhaps they will.  A party does not have a single will. There are doubtless Tea Party diehards that would shut down the government, push the nation into default, and never vote for any funding bill that includes the discretionary funding for Obamacare.

But they will not ultimately dictate the party's actions. What I strongly suspect will happen is that the Senate GOP will run down the clock, filibustering the so-called "clean" continuing resolution (with the Obamacare defund stripped out) until the last minute, then win a series of concessions making the horrendous House spending provisions worse -- shifting more funding under overall sequester caps from domestic to defense -- in exchange for allowing a vote [correction 9/24: Democrats need only a simple majority to amend the unchanged House CR -- thus, it's unlikely to get worse. But current reporting is confident that Senate Democrats will not amend the CR's spending provisions.] Then Senate Democrats will pat themselves on the back for "standing firm" against defunding Obamacare -- while locking in the sequester as a new funding baseline and shielding defense spending from much of its bite. Comforting reports that Red State Senate Democrats won't vote to defund Obamacare serve only to convince me that they'll give away everything else in the store.

Flip the script, Mr. President

Denouncing the latest Republican round of budget negotiation-by-hostage-taking, Obama said this to the Business Roundtable today:

just flip the script for a second and imagine a situation in which a Democratic Speaker said to a Republican President, I’m not going to increase the debt ceiling unless you increase corporate taxes by 20 percent.  And if you don't do it, we’ll default on the debt and cause a worldwide financial crisis.  Even though that Democratic Speaker didn't have the votes to force through that particular piece of legislation, they would simply say, we will blow the whole thing up unless you do what I want.  That can't be a recipe for government.

I think it's time that Obama did flip the script. Not in this round, and not by holding the debt ceiling hostage. But by using the leverage his office does afford him.

Since 2011, the extremist wing of the Republican party has consistently set the terms of our budget battles. That's because the the GOP House, enabled by the Hastert Rule and the extremists' ability to dictate to leadership, has wielded an effective veto over any prospective budget compromise. As funding and debt deadlines loom they loudly proclaim their intention to exercise that veto, even at risk of national catastrophe, and no one doubts their willingness.

But the President also has a veto.  It's time -- past time -- for him to prepare the ground on which he might use it to shape the terms of negotiation.