The New York Times story on the Senate budget vote this afternoon contains a false causal connection:
The Senate was expected to approve the budget later Wednesday before a prime-time news conference by Mr. Obama on his 100th day in office. No Republican support was anticipated due to the inclusion of a procedural provision that would bar filibusters against a health care plan later this year if it meets nominal budget targets.
This simply is not true. No Senate Republicans voted for the budget four weeks ago even when it didn't include health care reconciliation. As such, the lack of Republican support for the budget is not contingent upon the presence of health care reconciliation.
Anyway, I'm sure that this is one of the reasons that Senate Democrats finally decided to go with health care reconciliation. Total Republican opposition to the budget even if it lacked health care reconciliation made any further Republican threats meaningless.
If a political party consistently engages in sociopathic behavior for a decade or more (shutting down the government, impeaching a President, stealing a Presidential election, calling all opponents socialist traitors), and if the primary political result of that behavior is that the party in question loses virtually all of their power, then threats of even more sociopathic behavior from that party are not threats at all. Democrats seem to have finally accepted this. Let Republicans do whatever the hell they want--it only seems to hurt them.
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