House Republicans have "boxed themselves into a corner" with a government shutdown fast approaching this month, having thoroughly alienated Democrats out of any reason to help them keep it open, MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen wrote for an analysis published on Tuesday morning.
Cohen is far from the first to point this out — several others have done so in recent days — but he noted a particular irony being set up this time: the expiry date for government funding is March 15, the infamous "Ides of March" that Roman dictator Julius Caesar was told to "beware" of from William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. It became the date of his assassination.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and his allies, continued Cohen, "are seemingly doing everything they can to ensure" a shutdown. For example, "the potential of a government shutdown is the only leverage Democrats have to stop Trump and Elon Musk’s assault on the federal government. While Democrats might have been inclined to work with Republicans a few weeks ago, things have changed."
And there is currently no sign the GOP is willing to work with Democrats to congressionally block controversial moves like the freeze on federal grants or Musk's access to sensitive Treasury Department systems, both of which are currently under litigation in federal court.
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But it gets worse than that, said Cohen, because the Democratic base has been reawakened. Earlier in the year, they were too dispirited to do much opposition, which led Democrats to capitulate on things like a controversial immigration enforcement bill, he wrote.
But now, "65% of Democrats want their party leaders to oppose Trump rather than work with him. That’s a 38-point shift from cooperation to conflict in just a month."
Meanwhile, Republicans are also in the middle of trying to ram through sharp tax cuts for the rich, paid for by potentially slashing billions from Medicaid and food assistance — and they're doing all of this with a historically narrow House majority that has so few votes to spare that the nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to be Ambassador to the United Nations had to be put on hold.
The bottom line, Cohen concluded, is that "Republicans have given Democrats every reason to hold the line in March. The question now is whether congressional Democrats are up to the task."
