I haven't been paying much attention to Ted Cruz's antics nor to the threats in the House to shut down the government over Obamacare. This is a soap opera I lost interest in months ago. It's a conflict between the crazy redemptive reactionaries in the Tea Party and the country's political elite. I don't have a dog in this fight. It's as if we're in Egypt and we have to choose between Islamists and the military. I don't like either, but because it comes down to a choice between insanity and business as usual, I am inclined to side with the latter. And I assume the latter will prevail. There's too much power there. Obama and the Democrats are weak, but we're not Weimar, not yet anyway.
But who knows? The crazies might be bluffing, but it's quite possible that they are not--because they really are crazy; they're like suicide bombers who are quite happy to go down in a blaze of glory and in doing so to cause as much damage as they can to the Great Satan. This is how democracy goes down--when the crazies find ways to stretch the rules that destroy the game. I don't think that's going to happen, but we're seeing here a trial run at it. So it will be interesting, and I'm paying more attention now.