Looking for the Exits

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What House Republicans need now is an exit strategy.

They are backed into a corner where they must either push the United States into default – or else be attacked by their talk radio and Tea Party supporters as cowards and sell-outs.

Everybody who wants to avoid Fate 1 (ie, everybody) has an interest in protecting House Republicans from Fate 2.

Good news: the situation is not hopeless. House Republicans have been pressing for a vote in the Senate on the Cap, Cut, and Balance plan. On Saturday they will get that vote. The vote will lose – but even if it passed the Senate, it would still fail of ratification in the states, so no harm done. Advocates of Cap, Cut, and Balance can plausibly tell their supporters they have accomplished everything that can be accomplished.

So that’s the first step to an exit.

The next step to an exit comes from understanding Republican red lines.

One valuable element of this debt-ceiling exercise is that it has helped Republicans to rank their priorities.

Holding the line on taxes is first, deficit reduction only second.

Okay. We can work with that! Instead of a “grand bargain” including tax revenues, this weekend’s project is to dress up a “petty bargain” without tax revenues to look like a grand bargain.

It would be helpful if Democrats and the president would complain forlornly about the pain of the budget cuts in the petty bargain. The goal is to make the House Republicans feel like winners as they back away from the confrontation. Sorry Democrats, your role is to portray yourselves as losers. It’s a small price to pay to save the country.