I spoke to Ben Jacobs last week for his Vox piece on the shutdown that wasn’t, and where we might go from here.

Earlier this week, Liam Donovan, a longtime Republican operative and Washington lobbyist, told me that the goal of Republican dissidents was to force a showdown and have McCarthy face a reckoning within his conference. After all, regardless of whether it happened without a shutdown or with one, McCarthy’s exit strategy was always to work with Democrats to pass legislation that would fund the government. It was simply a question of which parliamentary approach he would take and what the collateral damage would be. As of late Saturday night, the showdown had happened and the government would remain open. But, at least for a day, the reckoning would wait.

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Jeff Stein of the Washington Post about the looming Seinfeld shutdown.

Some Republican strategists have complained about Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), one of the most bombastic GOP holdouts, who recently sent a fundraising email that blamed McCarthy for the potential shutdown.

“Gaetz is threatening the speaker’s job if he works with Democrats, while leaving no choice to but to rely on Democratic votes,” said Liam Donovan, who worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “The entire exercise is designed to fail. It’s all impressively nihilistic.”

Read the full piece here.

A tweet of mine showed up in today’s Axios‘ Sneak Peak newsletter focused on House Republicans’ appropriations messiness.

Between the lines: “The more dysfunctional the House is, the more it empowers the Senate to determine what becomes law,” tweeted Liam Donovan, a GOP consultant who closely tracks the House’s right-wing bomb-throwers.

• If the Freedom Caucus truly opposed an omnibus, Donovan suggested, members would support whatever appropriations bills could get 218 votes to pass.
• “In reality, failure is preferable to incremental victory because it validates” their view that both the Republican and Democratic establishment are corrupt and content with the status quo, Donovan said.

Read the full piece here.