Talks between Republicans and Democrats broke down in a last-ditch effort on Monday to avoid a government shutdown. Vice President J.D. Vance and House Majority Leader Mike Johnson held a news conference to say that Democrats were being hypocritical by “taking hostages” during the negotiations. At the same time, Democratic leaders kept saying that Republicans would be to blame if the government went dark.

Vance started by saying that a shutdown was coming because of the crazy things that Democrats, who are in the minority, were asking for:

“We don’t always agree…” But you don’t stop the government from working.

“Don’t threaten the American people with a gun and say, “We’re going to shut down your government unless you do exactly what Senate and House Democrats want you to do.”

“Now, we need to remember that they are very angry. They say they are very upset that this negotiation hasn’t happened yet.

“But if you look at the original, the original thing they did with this negotiation, it was a $1.5 trillion spending package, basically saying to the American people, we want to give massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars to illegal aliens for their health care, while Americans are struggling to pay their health care bills.”

“We thought it was crazy. We told them it was crazy, and now they come in here and say that if you don’t give us everything we want, we’re going to shut down the government. We think that’s crazy. We think it’s completely wrong.

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Shutdown fights are the most boring and showy circus in politics. This is mostly because Democrats have long since learned how to play both sides and blame Republicans no matter who is actually in the room.

If Democrats want a shutdown, it’s suddenly “Republicans’ fault” for being obstructionist. People say Republicans are sabotaging things if they don’t take bad deals. If Republicans pass a clean continuing resolution and Democrats kill it, the GOP will still be blamed. It’s like putting on and taking off a clown nose over and over again until everyone forgets who did what.

The Speaker, on the other hand, went after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to show how wasteful the demands were:

Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are out here stomping their feet and saying they can’t go along with this for a reason. They’re trying to bring in things that don’t matter. They made a counterproposal. You should go see what they asked for. $1.5 trillion in new spending that has nothing to do with the current appropriations process.

As you said, they wanted to bring back benefits paid for by taxpayers? Okay, hardworking Americans, they want to take your money and give it to people who are in the country illegally. They want to bring it back because we got rid of it. They want it. They want to support media outlets that lean to the left. They added $500 million to that, plus $1.5 trillion for a seven-week stopgap funding measure.

We won’t do that. They know we can’t do that, and we never have. There were 13 threats of shutdowns during the Biden administration. The Republicans who were in the minority did the right thing. We kept the government running. All we’re asking the Democrats to do is the same thing…

If the Democrats choose to close the government, the consequences are theirs, and I think that’s very sad.

Republicans need to keep saying this over and over again. In past shutdown fights, the script has always been the same: if a minority doesn’t support a clean continuing resolution, that minority is to blame for the shutdown. Why should the rules change now? If Democrats get to change the rules, they will effectively run the government from the minority by threatening to shut it down over and over until they get every policy they want. That’s a blatant power grab and an insult to the people who voted for Republicans.

Yes, the polls and the mainstream media will probably try to blame the GOP. That could happen, but it shouldn’t determine strategy. Giving in to avoid bad headlines only gives Democrats a weapon for the next fight. No matter what, Republicans will get in trouble. The right thing to do is to stay strong, protect the majority’s mandate, and not let shutdown brinksmanship become the new normal.