On Friday, I said I’d hoped to link to a column that honestly catalogued the merits of a government shutdown, and I meant it. I failed to find one by posting time which, hard as I tried, could still be on me. Later that day, though, I did hear an interview with conservative commentator Rick Tyler and thought a portion of it was worth sharing. While Tyler didn’t support the shutdown, he did say the below.

“I can sit down and agree with Matt Gaetz on a lot of– probably a lot of different policy points. But my argument with him would be, ‘You don’t have the votes. So what you need to do is go out in an election year and get more people who agree with you and then maybe you will have the votes. But shutting down the government is not the answer. That just proves you can’t govern, and who’s going to vote for a party that can’t govern?'”

Based on past comments, Gaetz would likely respond that approving budgets with massive deficits proves you can’t govern either. That’s a fair point to make. But going to such extremes to make it won’t win over voters.  Extremes like these are the reason Republicans have a razor thin majority in the House. Gaetz needs to realize that if he continues to rely on these tactics, Republicans won’t even have that. Then where will he be?