{"id":22402,"date":"2013-10-04T07:24:23","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T12:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=22402"},"modified":"2013-10-04T07:24:23","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T12:24:23","slug":"why-this-government-shutdown-is-different-from-the-last-17-shutdowns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/10\/04\/why-this-government-shutdown-is-different-from-the-last-17-shutdowns\/","title":{"rendered":"Why this government shutdown is different from the last 17 shutdowns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/360345\/budget-fight-and-obamas-vindictive-streak-jonah-goldberg\" target=\"_blank\">Jonah Goldberg<\/a> on what sets the current US government &#8220;shutdown&#8221; apart from all the others in recent memory:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Obama has always had a bit of a vindictive streak when it comes to politics. I think it stems from his Manichaean view of America. There are the reasonable people \u2014 who agree with him. And there are the bitter clingers who disagree for irrational or extremist ideological reasons.<\/p>\n<p>In his various statements over the last week, he\u2019s insisted that opponents of Obamacare are \u201cideologues\u201d on an \u201cideological crusade.\u201d Meanwhile, he cast himself as just a reasonable guy interested in solving America\u2019s problems. I have no issue with him calling Republican opponents \u201cideologues\u201d \u2014 they are \u2014 but since when is Obama <em>not<\/em> an ideologue?<\/p>\n<p>The argument about Obamacare is objectively and irrefutably ideological on both sides \u2014 state-provided health care has been an ideological brass ring for the Left for well over a century. But much of the press takes its cues from Democrats and sees this fight \u2014 and most other political fights \u2014 as a contest pitting the forces of moderation, decency, and rationality against the ranks of the ideologically brainwashed.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s unusual is the way Obama sees the government as a tool for his ideological agenda. During the fight over the sequester, Obama ordered the government to make the 2 percent budget cut as painful and scary as possible.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>When Republicans vote to fund essential or popular parts of the government, the response from Democrats is, in effect, \u201cHow dare they?\u201d Nancy Pelosi calls the tactic \u201creleasing one hostage at a time\u201d \u2014 as if negotiators normally refuse to have hostages released unless it\u2019s all at once.<\/p>\n<p>In the 17 previous government shutdowns since 1977, presidents have worked to avoid them or lessen their impact. Obama has made no such effort out of an ideological yearning to punish his enemies, regardless of the collateral damage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonah Goldberg on what sets the current US government &#8220;shutdown&#8221; apart from all the others in recent memory: Obama has always had a bit of a vindictive streak when it comes to politics. I think it stems from his Manichaean view of America. There are the reasonable people \u2014 who agree with him. And there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,84,13],"tags":[158,697,698,768,517,162],"class_list":["post-22402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-government","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-budget","tag-congress","tag-democrat","tag-republican","tag-socializedmedicine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5Pk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22403,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22402\/revisions\/22403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}