Federal Government Shutdown

[Tonus]

You know, if this is going to crush the world economy in a few weeks, it wont just be the American people who will hate the republicans but pritty much the entire world.

It won't. The GOP's biggest problem is its association with the religious right, which doesn't hurt them as much now (due to the high number of religious in this country) as it will in the future. And their economic agenda is easily sold as "less money to government means more money for you" which also makes it more popular than you would think (though the left has hurt this by linking them to both wealthy individuals and wealthy corporate interests).

But more than that, they know when to give up the fight and, like any good politician, proclaim a victory of sorts. Remember that the demographics in the USA are different from Europe. We have something like 21% of the population who identify as conservative and as many as 80% that identify as religious. Thus, many of the ~40% who identify as "independent" can lean just as far to the right as they might to the left (witness Reagan's 1984 victory, where a president who struggled to get a 34% approval rating just crushed Mondale).

And in the end, the damage will be limited enough that most Americans will forget about it (indeed, I wonder how many are even aware that the government has been "shut down"?). The GOP's biggest fight is not really with Democrats as much as it is with the faux-Libertarian Tea Party, which threatens to fragment them in some states where they would otherwise be fairly cozy. Similar to its relationship with the religious fundamentalists, the GOP must walk on eggshells around the Tea Party in the hopes of keeping the "fewer taxes" message while pretending that they don't hear the stuff about legalizing drugs and abortion. This is what really threatens the party's long-term survival, IMO-- being linked with ideologies that are being left behind by societal progress.