David Brooks to me just (thankfully) called the GOP the PLO. Please read the passage below and/or the full op-ed piece and you’ll immediately see the parallels between Arafat walking away from the deal that Clinton put together between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat in 2000 (where basically Arafat got 99% of what he wanted and he still said ‘no’) and the deal that the Republicans are walking away from right now – bold my emphasis:

“If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.
A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.
The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.
This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.
But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.”
Click here for the full op-ed

The whole ‘debt ceiling’ issue is a red herring. The current and future Republicans will stop at nothing to ensure that the ultra rich get richer. Rome is burning and they want to dance in the flames.