So, as a public service, I'd like to trace the history of the Republican Party when it comes to budget negotiations. In a nutshell, if you don't have time to read all the clips below, the Republican Party has been howling for years that Congress should follow the "regular order" when it comes to passing budgets. This regular order is: House passes budget. Senate passes budget. Conference committee hashes out compromise budget. House and Senate pass compromise budget. President signs budget.

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I've been saying for approximately a year now that the Republican Party is engaging in an increasingly-escalating civil war amongst themselves. For a long time, this intraparty struggle was really only visible to those who pay very close attention to politics. But now the American public at large is seeing what the wonks have been watching for months, because it really is impossible to ignore the magnitude of the Republican government shutdown and the looming default of the full faith and credit of the United States of America. As we enter the second week of what could be called "The War Between The Republicans," it's going to become more and more evident that Republicans truly have no idea what they want out of their manufactured crisis, and that the voices of sanity within the party (such as they are) are upping the pressure on John Boehner to find a way out -- any way out -- of this mess.

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Well, I have to admit -- I never thought John Boehner was stupid enough to shut the government down over Obamacare. Shows what I know, right? Sigh.

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The article below was written in June of 2009, when the public option was still fiercely being debated and the outcome of the health reform effort was not in any way guaranteed (or even, really, in sight -- "Obamacare" wouldn't pass until the following year). Somewhere in my research, I stumbled across what can be said to be Ronald Reagan's first foray into the world of politics.

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Now is a critical time for America on the budget showdown, of course. But behind the real effects of the shutdown on the American public is the political arguing. While the entire news media waits for the first public opinion polls to come out on the shutdown (and the question they consider crucial: "Who should be blamed?"), Democrats have got to press the issue hard, and offer up some solid pushback on current Republican talking points. Below are the comments I would dearly love to hear from either House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, President Barack Obama, or some combination of the three. Ideally, it'd be issued as a letter, signed by all of them. Short of that, here are the points all Democrats interviewed in the media could be making right now, to great effect. Because if this thing is not resolved in the next day or so, it's going to erupt into a much bigger and more-drawn-out fight. And Democrats need to be ready for it.

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Obviously, there are other things happening today in the world of politics, but instead of commenting upon them, we're going to stick to the schedule and instead offer up an abbreviated Obama Poll Watch column. It'll be somewhat shorter this month, due to the results having been accurately predicted in last month's column, and due to the fact that the situation on the ground in Washington is changing fast -- not weekly or daily, but hourly. Until we see how this week plays out, it's really anyone's guess how it'll affect the polling.

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Speaker of the House John Boehner has apparently just let the House of Representatives go home for the night, even though there's an hour left before the federal 2013 fiscal year ends (as of this writing). This guarantees at least a short-term partial shutdown of the federal government. Irony of ironies, however: the shutdown will not actually affect the Obamacare insurance exchanges, which will open on time tomorrow as planned. Meaning the whole "defund Obamacare" point of principle the shutdown supposedly hinges on won't actually be achieved by the shutdown. This basic truth was, as usual, completely ignored by most of the mainstream media who have spent the last week, instead, salivating over the prospect of a knock-down political fight.

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No, the big point missed in the midst of Senator Ted Cruz's talkfest was the moral of the story he read. By now, most people have heard that Cruz read, in its entirety, the classic Dr. Seuss children's book Green Eggs And Ham -- tucking his own kids into bed, long-distance, via C-SPAN. Cruz then doubled down on his point-missing by comparing Obamacare to the story's green eggs and ham. Cruz really has no excuse for this monumentally idiotic mistake, since (as mentioned) he read the whole story from the Senate floor.

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A fully-bipartisanship consensus was reached today in the United States Senate, which just unanimously condemned Ted Cruz as nothing more than a self-aggrandizing and self-promoting buffoon. Well, that wasn't exactly the title of the bill which came up for a vote, but it amounted to the same thing when every senator voted to ignore Cruz's "fauxlibuster" and move forward on the budget bill. The truly astounding thing in this unanimously bipartisan vote? Even Ted Cruz voted against Ted Cruz. If that isn't a bipartisan consensus, then I don't know what is.

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In all the intense focus on the Obamacare fight now playing out in the halls of Congress, very few are pointing out a rather depressing fact: this is only "Round 1." Out of three of these bouts on the schedule before 2014 dawns. It's important to keep the big picture in perspective, in other words. We're going to have this week's big showdown before the first of October, then we're going to fight all during October over the debt ceiling, and then we're going to have the very same fight we're having right now all over again in December, just in time for holiday shopping.

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