A view of the shutdown from our Northern neighbor

...Where else but modern America could someone like Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, the Tea Party champion from Texas, accomplish what he just did.

This is a man who, having led a spectacularly pointless rebellion against his own party's leadership, declared a "remarkable victory" when the government shutdown clanked and wheezed to its inglorious end Wednesday afternoon.

Not a Pyrrhic victory, mind you. That would imply actually winning something while losing the larger war.

No, Cruz declared victory on behalf of the Tea Party insurgency after winning absolutely nothing.

Obamacare, the Affordable Health Care Act that Cruz and his fellow Tea Partiers set out to destroy, is not only intact, recent polling says it's more popular, or at least much less unpopular that it was before.

In the interim, though, essentially by bullying their way to control of the Republican House caucus, Cruz and the Tea Partiers managed to shut down vast swaths of government, threatened a ruinous default, cost the American economy at least $20 billion, and drove their party's popularity to an all-time low in the opinion polls.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/shutdown-climbdown-the-triumph-of-the-republican-surrender-monkeys-1.2101877