It's a straight forward argument. If Republicans get some face saving fig leaf in return for backing off the creaking branch that they've climbed out onto, the odds increase that our American political system won't blunder into a miscalculation of historic proportions, failing to raise our debt limit on time and thus plunging the world into some semblance of a depression after a United States default. A Depression isn't a mere political talking point, anything even reassembling one carries horrific suffering for tens of millions of people. It is an extremely heavy price to pay if that is what it ends up costing to defend a sane and functional governing process in Washington. But personally I am very strongly moved by the counter argument; you simply can not reward terrorists for hostage taking, as it always leads to an even larger crisis somewhere not far down the road.
When two compelling arguments clash head on there isn't much room for some middle ground.between them. In my opinion here it what that is. Republicans may need to be given some fig leaf to save some face behind, even though that might fit the definition of making a concession in the face of extortion. But Republicans still need to be humiliated for what they are now putting this nation through. Any fig leaf they might receive has to be conspicuously tiny, it has to be laughably small, it has to obviously be nothing more than a face saving gesture tossed to them by Democrats in return for Republicans finally backing down.
There can be no real reward for what the Republicans have done. Whatever they "win" from this entire charade they have forced upon our nation has to be pitiful, a consolation prize so small that it is barely worth the cost of a stamp to cash it in. It has to be so relatively inconsequential that everyone outside of the hardest core radical tea party fringe will burst out laughing whenever a Republican tries to justify what they did to America in order to win that fig leaf in return.
The Tea Party is off the charts delusional now in their own sense of self importance. They have reached the point where a suicide mission involving the death of innocents is defended as an honorable course of action. They will persist in their delusions whether or not Republicans get tossed any bones in the ongoing talks inside Washington. But the rest of the Republican Party is desperate to negotiate some surrender terms that they can pretend is something other than total capitulation. When you strip all the politics out of it that is simply human nature. That's why the concept of face saving gestures is well established in nearly every culture on earth.
Here is the bottom line though. The Republicans can't come out of this showdown looking good in the eyes of anyone other than the most rabid supporters of that Party, and even that handful of extreme partisans need to come away feeling extremely disappointed with the outcome from this entire exercise in dangerous brinkmanship and masochistic futility. That's what it means to offer a fig leaf to someone who is otherwise stark naked. They don't exit the scene looking dressed again, they look like someone clutching a fig leaf to their genitals, scurrying away with their knees knocking.
That is the price that Democrats minimally need to hold out for this time. That is probably a sufficient price for Republicans to pay to not embolden them to try something like this again. If the end game of this confrontation, even with a fig leaf tossed Republicans, iincludes public confidence in that Party taking a serious hit, one bad enough to slam them over the head in the 2014 elections, resulting in the loss of a number of seats they should not otherwise lose, they will have scant incentive to try this again. At lesat until the memory of this fiasco becomes as faded as that of the self inflicted wounds Republicans suffered by shutting dowin the government during Clinton's presidency.
The lesson may not sink in immediately. We may have to revisit this manufactured crisis scenario a time or two before it is finally over if the short term fix mostly consists of a couple of continuing resolutions that kick the can down the road a month or two at a time. What the Republican Right has not yet understood though is that America is suffering from brinkmanship fatigue. To feed into it further is decidedly at their own risk.