The sequester is stupid and contractionary, but Republicans can't stop themselves

The house that dumb built. I'm not sure that there's much nuance to be parsed out about the sequester and why we seem to be headed for it despite it being plainly and obviously the worst possible thing to do. The problem is that the one actually sensible solution'to just dump the whole idea, as Congress can do at any point during this entire ridiculous, posturing debacle'isn't politically palatable to any of the involved groups. Sure, the sequester will foul up the economy, hurt a hell of a lot of people and botch up important government functions all around the nation, but as of right now both parties see "screw up the entire American economy, again" as being preferable to any of the achievable political alternatives.

The Republicans know the partial shutdown of services is going to hurt'a lot. They also know they're going to be blamed for it, no matter what little Twitter hashtags they deploy to the contrary, and that once people with government jobs or government contracts actually start getting furloughed, costing them a hefty chunk of their paychecks, people are quickly going to become irate. Every small town in America is going to be awash with the news of what's been cut, and how many local residents are being furloughed, and how that's going to affect the rest of the local economy, and they'll all be duly noting that there was abso-effing-lutely no reason for it other than this stupid "cut everything because governmenting is hard and stuff" plan.

The problem for Republicans, however, is that they've premised nearly all of their obsessive anti-Obama rhetoric around the notions that (1) the government can't create jobs, (2) all government is bad, and (3) the scary deficit monster is going to kill us all. They can't stomach voting to lift the sequester when that means acknowledging (1) that government does indeed employ lots of people, (2) it does indeed do stuff that their constituents like, and need, and (3) the deficit is in fact not currently as important as the more immediate task of not screwing up the tenuous national economy, because Basic Economics. You can hear them already in the early stages of talking-point disarray on the topic, but Republicans are supposed to be for harsh, painful cuts to government. That's their brand. (True, they want different cuts, but the different cuts are just as deep and egregious, they were just supposed to be in things that Republicans, well, hated more. When you're cutting this deep during this economy, though, you're going to hit bone no matter where you put the knife.)

So for Republicans, the only way to dodge the sequester is to fess up that their entire debt ceiling freakout, and all of their demands afterwards, and all of the loudest premises of their electoral existence in these last few campaigns were all mere bluff. The only escape hatch that the White House is providing is the original plan that would mitigate the nastiness of the cuts by coming up with new revenues, i.e. new taxes; again, this requires Republicans not just going against campaign promises, but abandoning their entire supposed economic philosophy on the subject, period. Forget ideological integrity in these things: You have to acknowledge that even if the Republicans wanted to ditch every austerian, anti-legitimacy-of-government, anti-revenue principle they've been working themselves into a froth over during these last years, they're at least going to need a little more time to come up with a creative explanation for it. A new Twitter hashtag isn't going to cover that one.

The Republicans have invested themselves so heavily in these two brands of economic extremism that they are now ingrained into everything the Republican Party stands for. Whether those previous assertions mesh with plain reality or with the political needs of the moment (or, God help them, a phalanx of furious donors and lobbyists whose industries are about to be hit with that same axe) is irrelevant now. They're screwed. The sequester represents government as they advocated for it to be run: sharp, painful cuts done with an axe instead of a scalpel. They stood up and demanded it outright, during the debt ceiling fight. Then they all signed onto a law to do just that. If they're complaining, it's only because they only now realized that their demanded fantasy plan is about to be put into action, and that the results might not be the glowing American utopia that they've been promising. Follow me below the fold for more of the stupid.