In truth, the majority of them must've realised well in advance of Friday's deadline they'd cooked up a good old nose/face cutting/spiting situation. It's well and good to hate a perfectly legal and popular-enough law (Obamacare), but when taking an irresponsible stand against said law threatens to devalue your personal stock portfolio, perhaps governing a country isn't such an unreasonable idea after all.
And perhaps when we do it all again next year, for a more exciting final scene, the greater US Congress should ignore common sense and instead act upon the fiscal advice of Congressman Ted Yoho. Mr Yoho, who holds no economic qualifications and until recently ran a veterinarian practice for large animals, wisely recommended during the debt limit crisis that the Government simply default on its bills.
"I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets." He told the Washington Post, disagreeing with almost every economist on Earth.
Good on you, Ted! YOLO, Yoho! Nothing says "stability" like a catastrophic, self-inflicted recession.
In the spirit of Ted's rosy-cheeked optimism though, I'd like to hazard a guess and suggest this won't actually happen again. President Obama has proved he's not willing to play hostage to extreme minority factions of the US Congress. With three quarters of Americans' disapproving of the Tea Party's ideological stand - including most moderate Republicans - the Tea Party has learnt this behavior really doesn't win them popularity.
The whole debacle has exposed and salted the festering Republican divide, where Tea Party interest groups threaten to campaign in next year's mid-term primaries against the Republican politicians who don't push their specific faction's agenda. But for the greater party to beat Hillary Clinton (No doubt) two years later and repeal Obamacare by proper democratic means, it'll take a reasonable, diverse, modern and united front: Everything the current GOP is not.
