Pelosi has Given Both President Obama And Speaker Boehner a Face-Saving Out From Shutdown Impasse

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has made it possible, if they choose to take advantage of it, for both President Obama and Speaker Boehner to, tomorrow, close down the close down.

Pelosi led 163 other House Democrat's in voting against the following motion, for which a two thirds majority was required, and for which the lack of which majority the bill failed.

H J RES 72 2/3 YEA-AND-NAY 1-Oct-2013 7:44 PM
QUESTION: On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass
BILL TITLE: Making continuing appropriations for veterans benefits for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.

It is indefensible of course to deny veterans their benefits. If anything needs to be funded it is the well being and dignity of those who served in uniform and fought for the defense of liberty. To see the sorry spectacle of veterans having to "invade" a memorial to their valor would be damaging enough for the Democrats but surely removing vet's financial support is ludicrously self-defeating and the very image of heartlessness.

Not that the left hasn't tried to, somehow, spin this madness. the resolutely Obama supporting David Weigel at Slate has tried to find solace "It's a gambit" in the fact that 33 Democrat's voted to support the veterans seeing that minority as somehow removing the charge that "Dem's hate vet's". The fact that the Pelosi led majority of Democrat's seem to do exactly that seems to have escaped him-but again, even he could surely see how lame his spin is and is just going through the motions.

It would seem to most rational people, surely, that Pelosi and her 163 strong cohort don't want to commit political suicide by denying  "the greatest generstion' solace and food in their old age. There must be a sensible reason why the Democrats voted as they did which must surely shift the balance of opinion towards the Republicans as the sane and sensible partner in this political dance macabre.

To use Weigel's term there must be a "gambit' underlying the seeming madness. All I can think of as a possible 'eleventh dimension chess move" as the left is so fond of describing what they see as President Obama's craftiness is that Pelosi's vote is so wrong that it gives President Obama the opportunity to step in and announce that "for the sake of those who served America without thought of self I too am reversing my adamant stand against negotiating" or some other example of the lofty hyperbole he is so adept at.

Then Speaker Boehner can also say that the needs of our veterans come before any dogma and etc etc". All that would remain is for the president and the speaker to meet in some staged "beer summit" and work out some mutually face saving postponement of some or all aspects of Obamacare-perhaps "the initial  parts which appear to be causing some glitches" or some such formula.

If they were really clever they could also address the debt ceiling but perhaps that is a bridge too far at this point.

Pelosi has handed both men a tool as possibly as fortuitous as the one given to President Obama by Kerry's "offhand" remarks about Syria. We will see if sane minds grasp this one too if it happens. Perhaps Sarah Palin can play the "Putin' in this drama which would round things out wonderfully.