The debt ceiling was raised with no spending cuts.  There were only 27 Republicans who voted for that in the House and no Republicans who voted for it in the Senate.  The Republicans lost this battle, but they didn’t necessarily lose the war.

Let’s take a closer look at what was lost and what was gained.  Democrats wanted Republicans to vote against the debt ceiling so they could blame them for shutting down the government.  They did not even attempt to negotiate in good faith.  The main stream media would have hammered Republicans for shutting down the government without regard to the actual facts.  For better or worse, Democrats “own” the debt ceiling just like they own ObamaCare.  If you check out the opinion polls, raising the debt ceiling is not really that popular.

I think Democrats may have made a huge mistake.  How are they going to spin this when running for re-election?   Republicans have stockpiles of video, including clips from Obama, saying that raising the debt ceiling is irresponsible.  Even the main stream media can’t blame Republicans on this one.

The debt ceiling was going to be raised anyway.  Republicans would have caved.  They just would have incurred a lot of casualties in a failed effort.  I would have preferred that they put up a fight, but only if they were prepared to stay the course until they won.  With the current Republican leadership that was highly unlikely.

I think this will really hurt both Boehner and McConnell.  But I also think this may be a huge problem for Democrats in 2014.  They were already in trouble because of ObamaCare.  It is going to be very difficult for Democrats to explain voting to increase the debt ceiling, again, without cutting anything and this time they can’t even blame Republicans.

TDM

NOTE: Kevin Faulconer, Republican was elected Mayor of San Diego.  He now becomes the ONLY Republican Mayor of a major city.  Just last Sunday political polls showed this race to be very close.  The Democratic Party put in the typical last minute get out the vote drive, fueled with union money, and they expected to win. It didn’t work.  It wasn’t even close.  In addition, the voter turnout was actually higher than it was during the November election.  If this is a trend of things to come, 2014 is going to be a very bad year for Democrats.