How to Use the Debt Limit Votes (Tea Party On, Part III)

Immediately after the Final extension of the 2011 continuing resolution was agreed to back in April, I wrote about debt-limit vote strategy for the Republican House.  In particular, I described the political value of insisting on the inclusion of mandatory spending cuts in any debt limit increase this way:

Then, the independents who stand with us now will know that we are serious.  Then, furthermore, if the Democrat Progressivists who sit in the Senate and in the White House are unwilling to abandon their European high-spending ways, or if their Red State Democrat colleagues insist on locking arms with them against the nation's best interest, at least those Red State Democrat Senators can be called to account for their actions in 2012.  It is difficult to imagine the Awesome O's re-election in that scenario.

Here is an assessment  by Stuart Rothenberg of the risks to the two parties in playing chicken on the debt limit increase.  Democrat and Republican strategists he spoke with both felt that the Democrats had the weaker hand.

By the way, in case you think that TAO's (The Awesome O) double-tap on bin Laden assures his reelection, you might want remember Bush 41's astronomical approval rating back in 1991 after he ejected Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, and you might want to read this Gallup pollster with data in hand taken since the Abbotabad raid.  There's been no bump in the TAO's standing vs. a generic Republican; he still has only a 3% lead among registered voters.  There's a lot of difference between the approval-rating question and the deserves-to-be-reelected question.