"A government shutdown would invariably be blamed on the legislative branch" is because the Legislative branch, i.e. republicans, would be directly responsible for a Government shutdown.

The biggest problem republicans have is the " teabaggers"! Those teabaggers in congress "WANT" a shut down, and they don't give a damn about the results. The "regular" republicans in congress are scared to death that if they don't side with the tea party they will, like McConnell, end up with someone from the crazy right tea party as a challenger come primary time, and that scares the crap out of them.

The republicans created the tea party monster, and now they can't figure out how to get rid of it. The Koch brothers seem to be backing the tea party, and with all that money it will cost any republican who has to run against them in the primary, a lot of money. Even if a "actual" republican wins their primary, that does not mean some tea party clown won't decide to take them on as an independent come the national elections.

Republicans have pretty much painted themselves into a corner, they are damned if they side with the teabaggers, and damned if they don't. It's their choice to either shut down the government and get the voters pissed off at them, of stand up for what and do the right thing and fix he mess the country is in and then piss off the tea party clown voters! The good thing is no matter what choice they make, it should help democrats when election time comes.

As of today, the GOP has only a single Governorship to take from the Democrats (Arkansas).

The TeapartyGOP is running a high risk of losing, Florida, Pennsylvania (protecting child molesters is never good for one's political career), Michigan, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina, and maybe Kansas (Ayatollah Brownback has 34% approval rating).

A government shutdown would be faulted against the congress and would cause a slowdown in the economy. Any slowdown will certainly hurt the states.