I suppose this is now moot, but I still want to address this:
What does it mean that Democrats want to believe this, or that articles about double-secret debt solution loopholes are so popular? It’s sort of ominous. Not making a one-to-one comparison here, but it puts me in mind of the Tea Party-inspired Republican efforts of 2009-today to prove that this or that program they don’t like can be magicked out of existence by putting the Consitution in a black hat and reading it with special glasses.
I would answer that, in Paul Krugman’s words, outrageous behavior demands extraordinary responses; no one would be talking about invoking ยง4 of the Fourteenth Amendment or minting trillion dollar platinum coins if the Republicans hadn’t turned the debt ceiling vote from a routine opportunity for grandstanding into high-stakes negotiating over the long-term budget outlook. I would also say that enthusiasm for these options stemmed from frustration with President Obama’s apparently feckless response, in which he assumed a level of reasonableness and flexibility among House Republicans that, frankly, isn’t there. This situation is also why Matt Yglesias and others have been talking up the flaws inherent in presidential political systems like ours.
