So, The Republicans Folded On Planned Parenthood, Obama Folded On Cuts

By Steve Hynd

Looking at truly abyssmal optics and framing if they caused the government to be shut down over an ideological crusade against accessable medical care and for burning rivers, the GOP folded and we have a FY2011 budget which has about $38.5 billion in spending cuts - or just over half the cuts the Tea party was looking for. Doug Mataconis points to the really crucial bit of the final hour's negotiations - Biden explaining how shutting down the government over a Planned parenthood rider would play:

As the meeting was breaking up, Vice President Joe Biden told the speaker, in no uncertain terms, that his demand was unacceptable. If that became the deal-breaker, Biden said, he would �take it to the American people,� who would presumably punish the GOP for shutting down the government over an ideological issue.

�They were faced with a choice � they would either have to give in or shut down the government,� said a senior administration official, describing how the negotiations went from there.

 But, Michael Tomasky wants to know, if Biden could do that at the very last minute, why couldn't Obama have done it earlier, publicly, and gone for less harsh cuts?

to hear Obama kinda-sorta boasting about overseeing a domestic spending cut on a scale that even Ronald Reagan never managed leaves one wondering where and over what he might someday draw a line in the sand.

Last December, he signed George W. Bush's tax cuts. Then he introduced his own budget, which include a five-year pay freeze for federal employees and cut funding for a couple of subsidy programs for poor and elderly people.

Finally, during this whole process, he never once that I can remember made a forceful public statement singling out a GOP cut as severe or unwise, never defended family planning initiatives, never pointed to one thing and said, this I will not brook.

Yes, I understand, liberals are outnumbered. I'm more understanding of that than most liberals I know, believe me. And Republicans have power now, and they're extreme, and this is the way it's going to be for a little while at least. But any skillful politician can find ways to communicate to the middle and his base simultaneously. He just has to want to.

What;s going to happen in September? Stan Collender writes that we're looking at another shutdown over the FY2012 budget.

 The House GOP is likely to propose even larger appropriations reductions in next year's budget than it did for fiscal 2011 and the battle will be far more intense.  This especially will be the case if (1) the tea party wing of the GOP doesn't get what it wants on the 2011 appropriations and feels that it needs to make a stand on 2012, and (2) if House Speaker John Boehner thinks he has to make a stand on 2012 spending to show the tea party he doesn't deserve a primary opponent.

But surely the framing is only going to be even worse for the G.O.P. It's going to look like they're going after Planned Parenthood at the expense of good governance yet again...and they will be. Maybe Obama should let Biden play hardball from word one in September, because obviously the President isn't up to it.

Update: Steve Benen echoes Matt Yglesias and Greg Sargent in running out the Obama apologist line.

 The moment it was clear that the White House and congressional Democrats were determined to avert a shutdown, and congressional Republicans saw a shutdown as a reasonable, if not attractive, option -- one that their base would celebrate -- the rules of the game were already written to guarantee a discouraging result.

While over at Daily Kos there's a piece on how Tea party conservatives are going nuts over what is now affectionately called "Boehner's Cave."