Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:
I don’t know if they’re paying as close attention to this. There’s a lot of other news going on right now.
But I think the reality is that we’re going to be spending a lot of time talking about one person in particular, and that’s Kevin McCarthy, and the number of Republicans in the House who are saying, we’re OK with the shutdown because we didn’t get what we wanted.
So I think the fact that the focus will be on him will make that somewhat clear. The real question is what the implications are in the months and weeks to come. Does this last for a significant amount of time, so significant that it has a real impact on real people’s lives, on the economy, and how people see the Republican Party, who’s trying to run, obviously, in 2024, on, make us stewards of the economy because Biden has been terrible, Democrats have not done a good job at keeping inflation low?
If the conversation in the next few weeks is, well, actually, this is the Republicans who are creating some of this unnecessary damage to the economy, well, it makes — that muddies the water, certainly, to their argument.