Marc Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter and now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has an interesting column in the Washington Post on the Republicans' hostage-taking strategy. He writes:

"Democrats are in such a panic over the prospect of a government shutdown that President Obama spent four hours on the golf course Saturday and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told his colleagues to take the weekend off, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi left town to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary.

Why show up for work? The Democrats are following Napoleon’s old adage: Never interfere when your enemy is in the process of destroying himself."

Like a good number of Republicans, Thiessen clearly doesn't think much of a government shutdown. As he puts it, "Republicans are essentially putting a gun to their own heads and threatening to pull the trigger if the Democrats don’t capitulate. Not surprisingly, it’s not working."

Thiessen goes on to argue that Republicans should have chosen the debt-ceiling fight, rather than a government shutdown, as the place at which to make this stand. "They took the wrong hostage," as he describes it, and his reasoning lures Thiessen into territory that would be considered bizarre verging on treasonous in any other era in our nation's history:

"As former Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner explained during the last debt-limit standoff, the effects of default would be “catastrophic,” resulting in the “loss of millions of American jobs,” and would have an economic impact “potentially much more harmful than the effects of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.” Obama will not permit an economic crisis worse than 2008-09 and the “loss of millions of American jobs” on his watch. He has no choice but to negotiate with GOP leaders and cut a deal to avoid a government default."

Think about what Thiessen is saying, and the forthright blandness with which he asserts it. The whole rickety structure of his argument is founded on the belief that Obama cares too much about the country to risk catastrophic job losses and an economic collapse, while Republicans don't. They have leverage because they're just crazy and extreme enough to do it.

I still can't get my head around the idea that this is considered an acceptable means of doing the people's business. Even more bizarre, Republicans appear to believe that by threatening to harm the country to get their way on a partisan issue, they will be able to convince the American people that they have the judgment and maturity to be trusted with the reins of power.

Color me surprised if that strategy works.

Last week, senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer took some heat for saying that Obama would refuse to negotiate "with people with a bomb strapped to their chest. We're not going to do that." 

"It is not a negotiation if I show up at your house and say, 'Give me everything inside or I'm going to burn it down,'" Pfeiffer said.

The Republican National Committee insisted that Pfeiffer apologize, and a spokesman for the Republican National Senatorial Committee complained about "radical accusations" coming from the White House. I wonder -- will they respond in a similar fashion to Thiessen? Because essentially, Pfeiffer and Thiessen are choosing slightly different words -- bombs and house fires vs. hostages with pistols to their heads -- to describe the same basic strategy.

And again, the precedent that we're establishing or breaking here may prove far more important to our future than ObamaCare or any other particular issue. Debt-ceiling votes are a pretty common occurrence -- they've happened on average at least once a year since the turn of the century. If they become standard excuses for legislative brinksmanship, with both parties free to make wild demands as their price for not wrecking our credit rating and economy, this nation becomes all but ungovernable.