Mitch McConnell is doing everything in his power to tamp down the effects of the crazy talk by Ted Cruz, Mark Meadows and Mike Lee.  He's smart enough not to try and forbid them from spouting off -- he knows better than to do something that stupidly self-defeating -- but at the same time he's trying to carefully deprive them of mainstream media coverage.

Mitch knows how disastrous even the talk of a government shutdown would be to Republican election prospects.  It would be a rerun of 1998, where moderates and independent voters flipped to the Democrats over the GOP obsession with Bill Clinton's penis.  (This is also why Obama should be a nominating and appointing machine right now:  Get them through now, while Mitch's hands are tied.)

"But wait," you say, "I thought all the elections were done for this year?"

No, they're not, my friends.  There is still a very big one remaining, and that's the December 6 runoff for Mary Landrieu's Senate seat.

Mitch needs that seat to pad the GOP's margins for 2016 - because if he doesn't, the Senate flips right back to the Democrats.  He can't risk doing anything that might boost the turnout in Landrieu's runoff -- or worse, anger some indie voters into voting for Landrieu.

That is all.