0 started to break apart today. it started with today's newspapers. the fact that republicans no longer believed blowing through the debt ceiling would not be a big deal or defaulting on the debt would have catastrophic consequences, it has been a story brewing a while now. covered extensively in places like the national journal and places like talking points. it is a known story that has been increasingly reported out over the course of the crisis. but today, for whatever reason, today was the day that this story about the republican denial of the debt ceiling being a big deal, today was the day it finally landed on the front pages in places like "the new york times" and politico.com. it is kind of hard to believe that wall street has to actually read it in "the wall street journal" before they leave it is true. in fact, the main stream press country on the treasury bonds. they announced they sold off all u.s. government bonds that might come due at the time we are hitting the debt ceiling. they told the associated press somewhat shakily that just in case, they responded, but they are taking steps to protect investors. eek, and they are just the mutual fund people. if china does that? we'll be living elsewhere, milking goats. wall street today decided to finally essentially rattle the cage about what is going on in washington. and inside the cage, inside washington, they did get rattled. the republican politics around the shutdown and the debt ceiling and what this is all about and where they ought to hold the line and what they're supposed to be fighting for just collapsed today. the narrative just collapsed. two of the most aggressive conservative groups who have been pushing for the shutdown all along, who have been hounding any republicans who wouldn't go along with the shutdown, today, two of the groups essentially bowed out. the ceo of heritage action, which is the political part of the jim demint group, the heritage foundation, they target ed republicans with ads, they ran ads against 100 different republicans demanding that they take a hard line on the shutdown. well, they said republicans should pass a debt ceiling. also, freedom works banging the drum for a shutdown for months now, today, freedom work's ceo told the huffington post that yeah, we think they ought to pass the debt ceiling, at least get that part taken care of. the same ceo for freedom works a week ago said we will go past the deadline for the debt ceiling, and i don't think that was a bad thing. that was a week ago, with wall street getting freaked out a week later and politico freaked out about it, now he changes his tune and says yeah, we need to pass the debt ceiling. both the heritage action group, they're trying to save face saying the only reason we don't want to blow through the debt ceiling now is we don't want it to be a distraction on the focus of obama care, but at the same time they made that declaration today, paul ryan said the republicans need to keep up the fight for a bunch of stuff that does not center around obama care. paul ryan did not even mention obama care about what it is that the republicans need to keep fighting about. so if you're looking for cues from washington about what exactly is going on and why we're still shut down and what it is all about, you can take your pick. they're only fighting about obama care and forget the debt ceiling, or they are fighting over the debt ceiling and forget about obama care. okay. whatever the strategy was before, it sort of evaporated today between the conservative groups and the members of congress who supposedly are doing their bidding or vice versa, absolutely no coherence as of today. that was all before the koch brothers freaked out today, the koch brothers and their partners spent nearly a quarter of a billion over the last year funding all the groups trying the shutdown fight. the creepy paper mache head that says they are trying to not get the college students health insurance, heritage action, running ads against republicans who are insufficiently hard line on the shutdown, funded by the koch brothers. the de-fund obama care tool kit, funded by the koch brothers. they spent $236 million over the past year to fund nearly basically every single component to shut down the effort. shut down the government to stop obama care, brought to you by the koch. well, today they wrote a letter saying really, we have no position on the shutdown, sure, they're are against obama care but are not actually doing anything about it, they're just funding all the groups that are trying to fund the shutdown. as the letter said, i am sure that is true. but they have funded the entire organizations that demanded the outcome and forced it on the country. who else? don't blame us? so the wheels are coming off here. the republicans don't agree on what they are trying to get and how they're trying to get it. and they are clearly moving into the phase where people are trying to make sure they are not getting the blame for what happened. it sort of feels like it is ending. an important question about how fast it ends, because the practical question about the shutdown is not just becoming politically untenable, the way they handled the shutdown, was sliding money, essentially hoping the shutdown would be short and by moving around they could maybe ride it out. that strategy all over the government and basically all the government agencies is now resulting in new stuff closing down every day. because the money is drying up. they could make it work for a couple of days. but now it is just long enough that it is not working. we had for a few days the people on the veteran's staff, to process claims for the benefits. we don't have them now. we had enough people to keep the nuclear regulatory commission going, the people making sure no fukushima, they announced they had been using carry-over funds that they had been using to keep the regulatory commission open for the last few days. but no more funds, the spokesperson said today is the last full day that the commission will operate normally. there was a fatal train incident, because of the shutdown the ntsb has stopped investigating what caused that accident. the west texas chemical plant, apocalypse, that blew up 50 buildings and killed multiple people, that is being investigated because of a staff of 41 people, 37 of the 41 are now on furlough. the investigation into that explosion has now been put on hold. do you have a plant like that in your town? the cries of outrage yesterday coast to coast over the families of the service men and women not being able to fly to dover to greet the families coming home from the war they are fighting in our name? congress and the white house and the office of management and budget and the pentagon and private organizations all running today to try to make that better, to piece things together for those families, to try to at a least put that back together again. but every day now, this piece by piece rescue effort, the respond to the laws outrage, fix this thing here and here, this piecemeal response, is not going to work. with something else having to shut down, that will be a huge outrage or grave danger to somebody who will then try to get it fixed. but there are more of these things every day because the money runs out every day. and it gets worse every day. because ultimately, all the kings men are not going to be able to put humpty dumpty back together again. the way they are trying to work with the rest of it is becoming more impossible. it will be more impossible tomorrow, and even more impossible after that. and so the pressure of the shutdown itself, the political pressure of republicans not knowing why they're doing this, and how long they will do this, the rattle of the financial markets, they may actually blow through the debt ceiling today. the continuing pressure is breaking this thing for everyone. but if this is in fact breaking apart. what happens next? joining me now, ryan grim, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> what is the capitol hill manifestation of the kinds of shifts we're seeing around the arguments about why they're doing this, about what their strategy is, how is this manifesting among house republicans? >> you're totally right, the way this whole thing has broken apart, but that has been a gift to republicans. because as i said earlier they didn't really have a strategy. they were just kind of waiting for something to happen. so the tea party putting the debt ceiling off the table is a gift to them in the sense that it at least allows them form a semblance of a strategy. if you think about what is the republican coalition if you can even call it that at this point. if you have wall street and the tea party and heritage together, that is pretty much the republicans telling them not to blow up the debt ceiling. that means they're not going to blow up the debt ceiling, so they're talking about a 30-day, 60-day clean extension, once they extend it once, it is extremely unlikely they will bring brinkmanship before the holidays, that leaves you with the shutdown. they believe they can keep it with the cr. we're noticing what you notice, more things are shutting down every day. they have seen the statistics out there, saying 86% of the government is still running. so this is okay, we may represent this in suburban dallas, or wherever they might represent. >> ryan, what do you think about this sorting out the debt ceiling limit? obviously any ceilings worldwide, that this is going to get fixed are going to have an immediate calming effect. what do you think about the procedural timeline in order to get that squared away? >> according to harry reid's office they have heard nothing from the republicans in terms of moving forward on the debt ceiling. so that part is not hopeful. but they have an absolute awful relationship with the boehner staff and personally. so even though it happened i think it will move pretty quickly. they don't even need to talk about it. because if boehner puts a clean debt ceiling on the floor and it passes with democratic senate vote, the senate will have to take it up. there will be no excuse for them not to. the president will have to sign off. i see it as happening relatively quickly, especially because of what you alluded to. >> i am seeing the future, six months from now. and on every television screen, i see democratic ads whaling on republicans who voted to shut down the government. actually, you don't even need to see in the future, it is a dry run, they're doing it right now, for the 2014 election, are they doing a good job? 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