re: #7 simoom

Indeed it does.

It also indicates that the GOP had no strategy for dealing with the President in case Obama won reelection in November. They appear to have completely bought into the unskewed polling methodology of dealing with reality, which is to say that they substituted their own malarkey. It was wishful thinking, and when the grand bet failed, they couldn’t back out of the corner. The House GOP caucus simply couldn’t cut a deal to replace the sequester that substituted taxes for cuts and its only attempts before November were to eliminate the PPACA funding as substitution for the cuts. It was never a serious option and the House leadership knew this.

Cantor knew this. Even Boehner knew this, but Boehner got talked out of cutting a deal (and dumping the Hastert rule) for the sake of the GOP power play.

And the end result is that the sequester is upon us.