Krugzilla:

Jonathan Chait has an excellent piece documenting the way in which what he calls the establishment, and I call Very Serious People, misjudged the way the debt ceiling thing would play out:

“The failure to understand the crisis we were entering was widely shared among centrist types. When Republicans first proposed tying a debt ceiling hike to a measure to reduce the deficit, President Obama instead proposed a traditional, clean debt ceiling hike. He found this position politically untenable for many reasons, one of them being that deficit scolds insisted that using the debt ceiling to force a fiscal adjustment was a terrific idea, and that connecting the deficit debate to a potentially cataclysmic financial event was the mark of seriousness.”

He then goes on to show how the usual suspects — the WaPo editorial page, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Concord Coalition, etc. welcomed a crisis over the debt ceiling in the belief that it would lead to fiscal goodness.

[...]

As Chait says, the first thing you need to understand is that modern Republicans don’t care about deficits. They only pretend to care when they believe that deficit hawkery can be used to dismantle social programs; as soon as the conversation turns to taxes, or anything else that would require them and their friends to make even the smallest sacrifice, deficits don’t matter at all.

I can’t help but notice that Chait’s list of chumps is basically the same as the list of people who puffed up Paul Ryan and gave him an award for fiscal responsibility. Enough said.

or…….

Berger turned and looked out over the landscape of the newsroom. She saw a reporter and a photographer heading for the elevator, perhaps on their way to cover the May Day parade.

“Håkan, if I’m being a nuisance or if you’re busy today, I’ll come back tomorrow or the day after.”

“Today’s task is to write an editorial on the demonstrations. I could do it in my sleep. If the pinkos want to start a war with Denmark, then I have to explain why they’re wrong. If the pinkos want to avoid a war with Denmark, then I have to explain why they’re wrong.”

“Denmark?”

“Correct. The message on May Day has to touch on the immigration questions. The pinkos, of course, no matter what they say, are wrong.”

-from The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larsson