by Rip » Thu Oct 17, 2013 10:14 am
No but seriously.
You shut down the government, you get nothing, you get a chance to stand firm and rigid and instead you peter out and whine, proving you do not have the courage of your convictions, and everyone is already bitching about you trying it again in the winter, and if you DON'T you're a pussy to your people and if you DO you're a madman to your people and everyone else in the world, and it's all flarglebargle.
So here's what happens next election. Either they try the shutdown again, and then the democrats sweep in and take everything (this is not going to happen). More likely, though, the republican states are going to DEFINITELY vote republican, it'll just be for two different republicans, and then the party splits because you have too many opposing interests in the same uncomfortable bag. This ALSO means bigger gains for the democrats.
This means bigger government, which drives the extremists even further to extremes, and since this is also ideologically the gun party it's only a matter of time before the republican lifestyle is the new terrorist breeding ground in the mind of Pop Culture (the "instances" can be either real or entirely fictional in all our movies and tv shows, doesn't really matter to The Culture).
This combined with the rise of Progressivism via the latest generations being raised entirely on the internet will combine to form the actual republican nightmare that they are frothing at the mouth to prevent right now.
And it's totes their own fault.
Culture warrrrrrrrrr :D