Cliffnotes: Is This the End of the World?

In Washington terms at least, Speaker of the House John Banal's failure to get enough GOPer votes to pass his pandering Plan B, with its cuts to Meals on Wheels and other GOPer goodies, was spectacular.

Now the House has gone home for Christmas, and may not be back this year.  It seems that short of a last ditch final deal effort on Dec. 31, which Banal may very well not have the power to guarantee, it's over the fiscal cliff for the USA.

TPM seems right on this--it shows that Banal never had the votes to support any deal he was negotiating, and unless he is willing to take something to the House floor that can pass only with mostly Dems and a few GOPers, he can't even be considered a viable partner to negotiate with. 

Here's Andrew Sullivan:

"But the GOP appears incapable of acting for the public good. They cannot operate responsibly within the constitutional framework of this country. Their absolutism even in the face of stinging electoral defeat and hefty public opposition is a function of their existing in a hermetically-sealed ideological universe where the only thing they care about is not being primaried by someone even further to their right. That's right: the only thing. Not the country; not the debt; not the global economy; not the voters; not the American economy. They are vandals, not representatives, a rogue threat not just to this country but to the wider economic system in the world."

"We have a constitutional crisis: an opposition party so ideological and so bent on its own power at the expense of everything else, that the system cannot work. Only public opinion has a chance of swaying them. But when you're as fanatical as these zealots, public opinion is about as relevant as the thought that they should actually exercize basic responsibility."

Sounds like doomsday to me.