Everyone’s making the same point–

But it’s a point that needs to be made: the impending government shutdown is not the result of both sides being unwilling to compromise.
It’s not like a budget negotiation where compromise is inevitable. The two sides disagree about how much to fund the Navy submarine program. Or the Repubs agree to increase spending on food stamps in return for increased drug-crime enforcement. It ain’t elegant and the results are usually not ideal. But that’s not what’s happening.
The budget has been approved. It’s not under discussion. This is a more technical point (as the Atlantic explains), that Congress has to formalize authorize spending the money. It used to be a routine motion– the difference between negotiating your salary and getting your paycheck. But now it’s one more tool for Repubs to demand the end of the tyranny that forces them to live under laws they didn’t approve. Which is why their demands have nothing to do with the debt, per se. Instead it’s things like a one-year postponement of Obamacare and giving businesses the right to not cover birth control in their insurance. Oh, and also asking for a repeal of parts of the Clean Air Act and banking regulation and blocking net neutrality (I’m not sure how many of those made it to the final bill). The relevance of which to the debt ceiling is—?
The effects of a shutdown are bad for everyone, except for Republicans who believe in this fight like a holy cause. I’ve known a few who believe absolutely that their party, and their party alone is fit to govern; having someone in office they didn’t vote for is, by itself, a sign of tyranny. As the blogger Hilzoy once put it, liberals who oppose the death penalty believe it’s murder and it’s wrong; conservatives who oppose abortion believe it’s murder, it’s wrong and it’s a clear sign that democracy and freedom are dead. Because if the government doesn’t do what they want, what other explanation is there?
And for others, of course, it’s a matter of political survival. As noted at the link a paragraph up, this is very much an internal Republican fight, which is bad, as there’s not much anyone else can do to affect it.
Roy Edroso (linking to Digby making the same point) suggests the hardline Repubs are the equivalent of the 1960s’ radical left: Absolute in their ideology, convinced of their rightness, willing to do whatever it takes. Edroso also looks at the right-bloggers view of the shutdown. My favorite is one blogger’s response to the suggestion conservatives should work to repeal Obamacare the old-fashioned way (elect enough Repubs): “is it really conservative or Republican ‘leadership’ to let the American people suffer for years, until they finally rise up and demand reform?” So if you’re thinking health coverage looks good, the Repubs will save you.
And here’s a point, that no matter what Obama does, he has to break the law: Either not spend money he’s obligated by prior budgets to spend, or violate the debt ceiling.
As someone else said (don’t have the link handy), it’s not that the extremists don’t want to win. They just want to win without any compromise or having to give up any of their policies.
Good thing they’re losing. Bad thing we all have to hurt from it.
For extra points, LGM catches another false equivalence argument, that Obama did the same thing under Bush. Except, of course, he didn’t.