In their never-ending loathing of all things Obama, the GOP is apparently preparing to ratchet up the crazy, if this article by National Review's Robert Costa is any indication:
Sources tell me the House GOP will probably avoid using a shutdown as leverage and instead use the debt limit and sequester fights as areas for potential legislative trades. Negotiations over increasing the debt limit have frequently been used to wring concessions out of the administration, so there may be movement in that direction: Delay Obamacare in exchange for an increased debt limit.
It looks like their plan is a short continuing resolution -- 60 days or so -- and then a debt ceiling battle. How is that different than a shutdown over the CR? To the public, it's no difference at all: Same shit, different day. Obama has already made it clear that the debt ceiling will not be a negotiation. He has a Supreme Court ruling on his side on Obamacare, along with some positive media. The only reason the GOP is considering this plan is to paper over internal dissension. In two words: can't work. What is going to happen is that Boehner will fail to invoke the Hastert Rule; Democrats and a smattering of Republicans will do the responsible thing; and the Republicans will go through their inevitable catharsis, right in the middle of the 2014 election cycle. When they finish their self-inflicted hostage crisis, it will be 2015.
Where's my tiny violin?
Added: Jonathan Chait has more over at New York:
The debt ceiling is another story. The effects of missing the deadline would be immediate and, while unpredictable, potentially very large and irreversible. That's why Obama now insists, after disastrously allowing himself to be extorted in 2011, he won't negotiate the debt ceiling, but has never made an analogous pledge about a continuing resolution.
The sequencing of the two events is especially dangerous. Conservatives have riled themselves up over shutting down the government to stop the dread Obamacare, and party leaders have had to gently coax them to drop the weapon. But in so doing, they have an even greater need to placate their implacable wing, and an even harder time talking the implacables out of the next showdown, which happens to have massively greater ramifications.