Before we take a trip down memory lane, let’s recap the immutable shutdown basics:

If you have the votes, you get to do what you want. How nice for you.

If you have most of the votes but not enough votes, you have to make some tradeoffs to get most of what you want. That’s how the final product more or less reflects the will of the people.

Related, and this is hard for some people to grasp, but when you’re the majority, the minority doesn’t owe you anything.

Interruptions of government services are bad.

If you have the helm of the White House, Senate, and House, and the government shuts down, you’re getting blamed for it. Because you deserve it.

Keep those in mind as the distractions crank up.

THE GOP’S THREE-LEGGED STOOL

For most of this century, my shorthand for GOP “vision” has been “tax cuts, wars, and shutdowns.” It held up pretty well, even if it is due for an update with something about increased white panic and decreased basic decency. As for the shutdowns, let’s go to the videotape …

There have only been five shutdowns in American history that lasted longer than one day. For every shutdown over the last 30 years, the GOP has been running the wallet-wielding House.

In 2018-19, Republicans controlled the White House and both sides of Congress. The end-of-year shutdown was primarily over Trump’s wall. The GOP-majority Senate passed funding with no money for a wall. As it is wont to do, the House threw a tantrum with permission from the White House. Everybody knew who was to blame.

Several months before that, the January 2018 shutdown lasted three days. Trump is the only president in U.S. history who has managed to inflict a shutdown (well, two shutdowns) while enjoying majorities in both chambers. Impressive!

In 2013, with Obama in the White House and Congress split, House Republicans shut down the government in an effort to obstruct the Affordable Care Act. If that sounds dumb, just remember that Ted Cruz was still in the House. It wasn’t the last time that Republicans showed just how much they love screwing regular people out of health care. They lost.

Thanks to Newt Gingrich, the two shutdowns in 1995-96 really created the template for the modern shutdown: Democrat in the White House, Republican shutdown as political tantrum/fundraising bait. Republicans were running the House and the Senate in both instances.

I know it’s shocking, but the GOP agenda in those two cases focused on cutting taxes for rich people and raising Medicare health insurance premiums for senior citizens. That’s what they were willing to shut down the U.S. government for. Ultimately, they lost because these positions were and remain bad.

My favorite shutdown highlight was the part where Congressional Republicans shut down the government and absolutely none of them could explain why.

And yet, these unserious clowns keep finding their way back to power by pushing cultural hot buttons so they can do it all over again and fill their coffers in the process. Imagine the money and suffering we’d save if the electorate stopped getting suckered every few years by fearmongers and bullies who look at government like an annoying hurdle to instituting the oligarchy they believe they (and we) so richly deserve.

But back to the immediate future. Remember the reality for majorities, kids: If you have the votes, you have the votes. If you don’t, you don’t, and it’s your problem.