There's been quite a bit of energy invested by reporters and pundits over the past week figuring out ways in which blame for the Republican-caused government shutdown can be spread around to the Obama administration. Those efforts have culminated in a masterwork of forced equivalence by Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, who argued that the GOP is to blame for being completely unreasonable, and Obama is to blame because he's not indulging the unreasonableness of the Republicans, which is itself a form of unreasonableness.

Writing on her Washington Post blog at 11:00 a.m. EDT on October 7, Rubin lashed out at Republicans in Congress as a bunch of bumbling clowns who have no strategy for the shutdown or the debt limit fight, and no idea what they hope to extract in concessions from the Obama administration. The party, she wrote, is being needlessly stubborn in its unreasonable demands, is completely in shambles, and risks marginalizing itself so long as it clings to the “delusion” that it is “winning”:

So long as Republicans think they are winning the speaker and cooler heads in the Senate will have difficulty putting together a package that could resolve the CR and/or the debt ceiling. Meanwhile, the business community, suburban Republicans and lifelong conservatives shake their head in dismay. This mess and the delusion that one can reach unattainable goals at the country [sic] expense are not why they have supported Republicans. And if the GOP doesn't get a grip, these voters might not do so in the future, or at the very least they might close their wallets to GOP candidates.

Writing on her Washington Post blog at 1:30 p.m. EDT on October 7, Rubin lashed out at President Obama for refusing to negotiate with the Republicans in Congress on the debt ceiling or funding the government (the same Republicans she painted as delusional and unreasonable). According to Rubin, the only reason Obama could have for refusing to negotiate (the fact that their demands are delusional and unreasonable apparently doesn't count) is that he wants the “political obliteration of his political opponents.”

President Obama's assertion that he won't negotiate is inexplicable, unless the name of the game here is not a deal or economic survival but political obliteration of his political opponents. After weeks of intense focus on the crisis in Syria, the White House is set to turn to the economy.

The White House will counter that they will negotiate, after the continuing resolution and/or debt-ceiling bills are cleanly passed. But that is a distinction without a difference, and White House staffers know it. In actual war you can demand surrender and then negotiation, but in politics the other side has to survive and, hence, you must avoid making the terms so onerous that they can't be accepted. (Unless you think you are “winning” and the goal is to make the other guys look bad.)

[...]

When you want above all else to make the opposition look bad and set them up for failure (which, by the way, means a disaster for the country), then you decide to push them so hard they have to cry uncle. And when they are just as obstinate as you, they refuse to and the hostages suffer the consequences.

The “onerous” term the White House is supposedly imposing is refusing to negotiate on what Rubin herself called irrational and “unattainable” policy goals. Rubin is effectively pushing responsibility for the GOP formulating a coherent strategy onto Obama. She wrote in her first post that the GOP will be lost if it doesn't “get a grip.” In her second post she said it's actually Obama's responsibility to make sure the other side “survives.” At 11 a.m. she said the GOP was setting itself up for failure. At 1 p.m. she said it's the president who's setting them up for failure.

It doesn't make sense, but it covers both parties in blame, so mission accomplished.