It’s the 56th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik, so unavoidably we’re going to have us another day of music about outer space. Fortunately, there’s a lot of material to work with. Here’s Montrose with Space Station #5, live in Santa Cruz.

WaPo is confirming that the unidentified woman at the center of today’s bizarre and scary incident at the Capitol was indeed killed by police gunfire. No news about motive just yet.

Here are some final stories of the day:

* Blue Girl notes Ted Cruz’s crusading father is still peddling the “death panels” meme.

* Politico’s Alex Isenstadt details the general election invulnerability of the House GOP members pushing a hard line on the CR and debt limit.

* Denny Hastert says the “Hastert Rule” never really existed.

* At Ten Miles Square, Keith Humphreys worries that Holder’s prison sentencing reform initiative will wind up disproportionately punishing minority folk because they are more likely to be involved with gangs.

* At College Guide, Daniel Luzer reports on a theologian’s argument that Catholic colleges should stay away from reliance on MOOC, on moral grounds.

And in non-political news:

* MLB playoffs get fully underway tonight as Pirates face Cardinals and my Braves play what Atlantans used to call “the hated Dodgers” back in their NL West rivalry days.

That’s it for now. We’ll close with Johnny Winters’ performance of what is probably Elmore James’ best-known song, “Dust My Broom.”

Selah.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli really, really didn’t need a federal government shutdown. He was already trailing Terry McAuliffe in every recent poll. He already had a questionable ticket and a divided party dogging him. So with up to 170,000 federal employees in the state being prevented from going to work by the very faction of the GOP with which Cooch is heavily identified, and real economic side-effects for the Commonwealth well within sight, it’s not looking good for the fieriest Obamacare-hater of them all.

Like several GOP House members from VA, Cooch has opposed the shutdown. He has also (with the same best-defense-is-a-good-offense tactic he used earlier in claiming critics of Virginia’s atavistic sodomy laws were coddling child abusers) tried to suggest T-Mac might shut down Virginia’s government in an effort to force a Medicaid expansion.

But his main argument is that the fight in Washington has nothing to do with him (which is, of course, undercut a bit by his long involvement in the kill-Obamacare effort):

Danny Diaz, a senior campaign adviser, said voters would be able to make a distinction between Washington lawmakers and the statewide candidates for governor.

“I think these are voters who are going to understand, O.K., this is the federal government, and these are guys running for state office, and I’ve heard from them and I’m going to weigh that,” he said.

Hmmm. Cooch ought to talk Jeb Bush before relying on that assumption. Jebbie famously lost his first bid for governor of Florida (and hence the opportunity to run for president as the Bush Dynastic Candidate in 2000) in 1994 in no small part because Lawton Chiles succeeded in tying him to Medicare cuts being proposed by Republicans in Congress.

In any event, Republicans who have spent the last five years trying to tie Democratic candidates to Barack Obama are in a poor position to urge voters to make fine distinctions between members of the same party. The silver lining for Cooch is that he may have an excuse for losing instead of admitting he hasn’t worn well on Virginia voters.

The ever-insightful John Judis of TNR has a sweeping analysis of the origins and significance of our particular moment of political history that you don’t have to agree with entirely to find illuminating. He views today’s conservative revolt against government as parallel to and in some respects derived from the antebellum nullification movement and the coalition that fought the New Deal. His prognosis for where we are headed if radical conservatism isn’t curbed is not cheerful:

The largest effect is likely to be continued dysfunction in Washington, which if it continues over a decade or so, will threaten economic growth and America’s standing in the world, undermine social programs like the Affordable Care Act, and probably encourage more radical movements on the right and the left. Think of Italy, Greece, or Weimar Germany. Or think about what the United States would have been like if World War II had not occurred, and if Europe, the United States, and Japan had failed to pull themselves out of the Great Depression.

But in discussing possible ways to reverse this trajectory, Judis says something worth pondering:

Politically, the Republican far right has to be marginalized. That can happen either through ordinary conservative Republicans like Tennessee Senator Bob Corker or California Congressman Devin Nunes bolting the party or by the conservatives and moderates reclaiming control of the party and forcing the far right to create its own party along the lines of the old Dixiecrats or George Wallace’s American Independent Party. In the former case, you would have the emergence of an FDR-strength Democratic majority; in the latter, an Eisenhower era collaboration between the parties.

In other words, the current chaos and tension within the GOP could lead to an actual split with one side or the other controlling the elephant’s tired old carcass.

How likely is that? Not so likely, I suspect. For all the back-biting and RINO-hunting and “they’re crazy” whispering that has long afflicted the GOP, it’s important to understand that a lot of the divisions involve strategy and tactics rather than actual policy goals or fundamental ideology. All the “moderates” bad-mouthing Ted Cruz this last week did, after all, vote against Obamacare and for the Ryan Budget. Nearly all of them favor abortion bans and oppose tax cuts even if they are necessary to achieve any sort of bipartisan fiscal deal. And on the other side of the barricades, for all the endless accusations on the right of Republican Establishment gutlessness and betrayal, the hard-core conservatives did in the end loyally back the last two GOP presidential candidates (though they did so after forcing them well out of their own ideological comfort zones).

So I wouldn’t count on a big split in the Republican ranks any time soon, much less a real divorce.

It’s not clear whether the reference to “Calvinball”—that fabulous game in the cartoon strip Calvin & Hobbs where the rules are made up by the players on the fly—in this Ezra Klein report is his own construction or is from someone in the White House, but it is perfectly apt:

As the White House sees it, Speaker John Boehner has begun playing politics as game of Calvinball, in which Republicans invent new rules on the fly and then demand the media and the Democrats accept them as reality and find a way to work around them.

First there was the Hastert rule, which is not an actual rule, but which Boehner uses to say he simply can’t bring anything to the floor that doesn’t have the support of a majority of his members.

The shutdown, the White House argues, is now operating under a kind of super-Hastert rule in which a clean CR is supported by a majority of House Republicans but Boehner has given the tea partiers in his conference an effective veto over what he brings to the floor.

Then there’s Boehner’s demand for further concessions on the debt limit, which he now says he can’t back down on, but which he made knowing that it would make it harder for him to back down.

The White House has decided that they can’t govern effectively if the House Republicans can keep playing Calvinball. The rules and promises Boehner makes are not their problem, they’ve decided. They’re not going to save him.

More to the point, playing Calvinball on such momentous topics as a government shutdown and a possible debt default is especially dangerous because the odds of miscommunication and miscalculation are nearly as high as the real-world stakes. And to think: Republicans used to be the ones who fretted that the economy was being damaged by “uncertainty” over Obama policies.

This is breaking news that’s not very clear at the moment, but here’s the latest from WaPo:

The U.S. Capitol Police sent out this message a short time ago:

“SHELTER IN PLACE. Gunshots have been reported on Capitol Hill requiring staff in all Senate Office Buildings to immediately shelter in place. Close, lock and stay away from external doors and windows. Take annunciators, emergency supply kits and escape hoods; and move to your office’s assigned shelter in place location or the innermost part of the office away from external doors or windows. If you are not near your office, go to the office nearest to you and shelter with that office and then check in with your OEC. No one will be permitted to enter or exit the building until directed by USCP. Staff is advised to monitor the situation. Further information will be provided as it becomes available.”

And then there’s this from AP:

A police officer was reported injured after gunshots at the U.S. Capitol, police said Thursday while putting the entire complex on lockdown.

“There are reports of injuries,” said Terrance Gainer, the Senate’s Sergeant at Arms.

We’ll keep following the story.

UPDATE: The lockdown is over and the House, at least, is soon scheduled to reconvene. But the story, which seems to involve a car chase that began near the White House, is very unclear at present.

UPDATE II: Multiple reports indicate a woman tried to crash a barrier near the White House, and was then chased by Capitol Police to a spot near the Hart Senate Office Building, where she was injured or perhaps killed (apparently by gunfire from police). An uninjured child was found in her car, according to one report. The injured police officer was not shot, but was hurt when his pursuing car was upended by a barrier automatically rising near the Capitol.

It’s good to be home, albeit after a five-hour flight and two-hour car drive in the wee hours. Here are some midday treats baked up right here in California:

* Obama meeting with congressional leaders last night sounds like it was 90 minutes of Kabuki.

* Boehner quietly telling colleagues he’ll trash Hastert Rule to avoid debt default. Reaction won’t be quiet.

* Shutdown to delay September jobs report since BLS just loaded with “non-essential” employees.

* TAP’s Abby Rapoport previews Wendy Davis gubernatorial campaign.

* In other news from the Lone Star State, Amanda Marcotte reports on latest creationist scheme from state school board.

And in non-political news:

* Tropical Storm Karen gaining strength in Gulf.

As I take a brief lunch break, here’s Elmore James with “Standing At the Crossroads,” another topical blues song.

So U.S. Rep. Martin Stutzman (R-IN) has become not only a poster boy for alleged Republican “nihilism,” but a punching bag for the president:

President Barack Obama didn’t mention the Indiana Republican by name during his Thursday morning speech to a Rockville, Md., construction company, but he did make sure to rub the GOP’s sentiments in the blue collar-crowd’s faces.

“Just yesterday, one House Republican said — I’m quoting here, all right, because I want to make sure people understand I didn’t make this up — one House Republican said, ‘We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this, and I don’t know what that even is.’

“Think about that. You have already gotten the opportunity to serve the American people. There’s no higher honor than that,” 44 told the assembled workers, who, according to media reports, both laughed and clapped for the ready-made punch line.

So per Roll Call’s Warren Rojas, Stutzman’s trying some damage control:

About an hour after being lampooned by POTUS, Stutzman’s press shop issued the following mea culpa:

“Yesterday, I carelessly misrepresented the ongoing budget debate and Speaker Boehner’s work on behalf of the American people. Despite my remarks it’s clear that the American people want both parties to come to the table to reopen the government, tackle this nation’s debt crisis, and stop ObamaCare’s pain.”

Best of luck with the rest of your backpedaling, sir.

Well, it is likely Republicans want to “tackle his nation’s debt crisis (sic!)” which means cutting domestic spending (probably enough to accommodate some more tax cuts) and “stop ObamaCare’s pain,” and would reopen the federal government if they made progress on those two goals. But attributing this agenda to “the American people”—twice!—is an incredibly annoying and cowardly habit.

The dishonesty and cynicism underlying the House GOP’s new tactic of passing “piecemeal” appropriations for very popular programs and then acting like it’s Democrats who thought of this whole shutdown thing are so stunningly obvious that some observers (myself included) haven’t taken the time to point at the demagogues who are deploying this cheap trick and cry: Shame! Shame!

So here it is: Shame! Shame!

The only way I can understand this ploy is as an appeal to the lowest of low-information voters, who really don’t have much of an idea how the government shutdown occurred. This is different, and more appalling, than the parallel GOP effort to convince weary Americans that whoever did or didn’t cause the shutdown, both sides should make compromises to end it as quickly as possible. No, the “we want to keep the parks and memorials open and the mean old Democrats don’t” BS is consciously aimed at voters who don’t know a “clean CR” from a tooth-cleaning. I’m not blaming the voters here; they undoubtedly think they have better things to do than to become budget process experts. But that may have to change between now and the next election.

As part of my “No, They’re Not Nihilists” morning, I’d point to Ross Douthat’s latest column, which squarely identifies another source of conservative frustration and disagreement on how to achieve their very real and concrete goals:

[There is a] deep, abiding gulf between the widespread conservative idea of what a true Conservative Moment would look like and the mainstream idea of the same. For the American mainstream — moderate and apolitical as well as liberal — the Reagan era really was a kind of conservative answer to the New Deal era: A period when the right’s ideas were ascendant, its constituencies empowered, its favored policies pursued. But to many on the right, for the reasons the Frum of “Dead Right” suggested, it was something much more limited and fragmented and incomplete: A period when their side held power, yes, but one in which the framework and assumptions of politics remained essentially left-of-center, because the administrative state was curbed but barely rolled back, and the institutions and programs of New Deal and Great Society liberalism endured more or less intact.

This divide, I think, explains a lot of the mutual incomprehension surrounding size-of-government debates. To liberals and many moderates, it often seems like the right gets what it wants in these arguments and then just gets more extreme, demanding cuts atop cuts, concessions atop concessions, deregulation upon deregulation, tax cuts upon tax cuts. But to many conservatives, the right has never come remotely close to getting what it actually wants, whether in the Reagan era or the Gingrich years or now the age of the Tea Party — because what it wants is an actually smaller government, as opposed to one that just grows somewhat more slowly than liberals and the left would like.

By “smaller government,” Douthat means one where major elements of the New Deal/Great Society safety net cease to exist in anything like their current form, and the presumption that basic functions of collective life like education will be publicly financed and delivered comes to an end.

That’s what conservatives want (among other reactionary things), so of course they need maximalist tactics and an atmosphere of crisis to make progress on such an agenda.

[W]hat you’re seeing motivating the House Intransigents today, what’s driving their willingness to engage in probably-pointless brinksmanship, is not just anger at a specific Democratic administration, or opposition to a specific program, or disappointment over a single electoral defeat. Rather, it’s a revolt against the long term pattern I’ve just described: Against what these conservatives, and many on the right, see as forty years of failure, in which first Reagan and then Gingrich and now the Tea Party wave have all failed to deliver on the promise of an actual right-wing answer to the big left-wing victories of the 1930s and 1960s — and now, with Obamacare, of Obama’s first two years as well.

I agree. It’s the Goldwater campaign over and over and over again, with the same goals, the same demonology and the same frustration at Republican Establishment squishes who are willing to settle for what Goldwater himself (in referring to the Eisenhower administration) called a “dime-store New Deal” instead of a rollback of the whole welfare state. Indeed, the goals are so audacious and the frustration so intense that it can make conservatives look like “nihilists” if you miss the underlying patterns.

If the abnormal-psychology analysis of “nihilists” or blundering terrorists is the wrong way to look at what House Republicans are up to right now, what’s the right way? I’d say Greg Sargent probably has it about right:

Many House Republicans now demanding Boehner exercise maximum tactics to block Obamacare - such as [Blake] Farenthold - were elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010. Their formative legislative experiences included the heady debt ceiling showdown of 2011, in which Obama — badly weakened by the 2010 election results, and fully convinced Republicans would allow default, because an economic meltdown would ensure his 2012 defeat — bowed to the leverage the default threat gave them, resulting in the terrible 2011 austerity deal that still haunts us today.

But all those conditions are no longer operative. Obama won reelection decisively, and now it’s House Republicans who stand to lose the most politically from default and economic havoc. All indications are that Obama now believes he made a major mistake in 2011 and is determined not to repeat it. Indeed, now the incentives run strongly against legitimizing use of the debt ceiling as a tactic to extract concessions.

What’s particularly worrisome is that many House Republicans don’t seem to understand or accept any of this. Stuck in 2011, they continue to proceed from the premise that agreeing to fund the government at sequester levels, or raising the debt ceiling, represent leverage points for which they should be rewarded by concessions in return. It’s true Obama legitimized this idea in 2011. But today’s Tea Partyers don’t seem capable of understanding that this leverage was artificial, rather than an enduring fact - the product of circumstances that have dramatically shifted — and that Democrats are determined not reproduce those circumstances for them.

I’m not as entirely convinced as Greg is that Democrats might not find some way of slipping Republicans enough face-saving concessions to allow them to back down without punishment from “the base.” But the basic idea is right, and it comes down to the bedrock conservative belief that the 2012 elections were an aberration—perhaps caused by Romney’s mistakes, or “media bias” for Obama, or the incumbent’s special relationship with minority voters—and that the 2010 elections were the Real Deal and the wave of the future. If you buy that, then of course you’d assume the dynamics that led to the 2011 fiscal deal were still in force, and just as importantly, conservative activists would think that and expect you to behave accordingly.

The trouble is: how do Obama and congressional Democrats convey convincingly to Republicans that it’s not 2011 any more? Yesterday I suggested a mano a mano confrontation between Obama and Boehner, perhaps over a furtive cigarette or two, in which the president makes it clear he really is not going to negotiate over Obamacare or the debt limit even if the Speaker credibly threatens to take the nation over the brink. Whatever tactic Democrats use, it should be based on a sober realization conservatives are acting on a strong if mistaken concept of the political dynamics involved.

The rapidly spreading progressive CW about what House Republicans are doing is that they are “nihilists” who have blundered into an impasse and have no clue how to get out. Jonathan Chait vividly compares them to characters in the Cohn Brothers’ tragi-comedy Fargo:

Boehner resembles William H. Macy’s character in Fargo, who concocts a simple plan to have his wife kidnapped and skim the proceeds, failing to think a step forward about what happens once she’s actually seized by violent criminals. He doesn’t intend for her to be harmed, but also has no ability to control the plan once he’s set it in motion. In the end, Boehner’s Speakership is likely to end up in the wood chipper, anyway.

Rep. Martin Stutzman (R-IN) has accomodatingly served up a quote to the Washington Examiner that will be quoted a thousand times today as proof House conservatives believe in nothing but, to use Brother Benen’s label, “post-policy nihilism:”

“We’re not going to be disrespected,” conservative Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., added. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

So, we are all tempted to believe, there’s really nothing Obama or congressional Democrats or even sensible Republicans can do until The Crazy burns itself out or its devotees find a distraction.

Maybe that’s true in the end, but all this “they don’t know what they want” talk is both dangerous and wrong. Perhaps conservatives are unsure at the moment about which demands to make, but they’ve got plenty of them—perhaps too many of them—close at hand. They aren’t “nihilists;” they are extremists. What do they want?

* “Entitlement reform,” which means structural changes in the major New Deal and Great Society safety net programs to eliminate the “mandatory” character of spending on them and the personal “entitlement” to a reasonably fixed set of benefits.

* “Tax reform,” which means rate reductions for corporations and high-income individuals, perhaps offset by regressive consumption taxes.

* Domestic spending reductions, focused on low-income non-defense discretionary accounts (the same ones being most affected by the government shutdown).

* Higher defense spending, and particularly the relaxation of sequestration for the Pentagon only.

* Some sort of tangible progress towards the GOP’s general goal of banning abortion.

* Some sort of additional relief (they’ve already obtained quite a bit of it) for the poor, beleaguered financial sector.

* Wholesale abandonment of any limitations whatsoever on fossil fuels.

And yes:

* Sand in the gears of implementation of the Affordable Care Act of 2010.

I could go on and on, but you get the point: today’s GOP is in full-fledged revolt against much of the bipartisan policy legacy of the second half of the twentieth century and the small additions made to it since. They have a perennially rich menu of things they want once they have the leverage to secure them, whether it’s by electoral victories or horse-trading or hostage-taking. It’s a mistake to assume that they won’t get a ransom note together that they will stand by. And it won’t be a laughing matter.

I’ll be featuring some of the music of Elmore James today, as recorded by various folk. Reflecting the likely trajectory of the day’s news, here are the Allman Brothers performing “The Sky Is Crying.”

Here at the most distant gate available at ATL, preparing for a five-hour flight, I’m rarin’ to go home. But here are some final items of this maddening day:

* Like Dylan Matthews, Matt Yglesias sees potential doom in our constitutional system.

* An equally sunny Jonathan Chait predicts a debt default.

* Josh Marshall says don’t count on “moderate” Republicans to save the day: they never show up.

* Sarah Kliff looks at the enrollment “glitches” and adjuges them as primarily due to high demand for information—and insurance.

* At Ten Miles Square, Jonathan Bernstein sees no evidence Boehner is dragging House GOP into a fight they don’t want.

And in non-political news:

* Vermont man pleads guilty to stealing cards and letters written by Robert Frost, and gets by with $100 fine.

That’s it for today. Let’s close on a more hopeful note, with (once again) Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush performing “Don’t Give Up.”

Selah.