Somebody Should Yell "Fix Bayonets!" Just For Kicks

The beginning of the end. It'll still take a while for the rest of 'em to stop confusing hard-headedness with integrity in the face of diminishing returns. What am I saying? No returns:

   U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, a Florida Republican, said he would support a broad spending deal that didn’t include changes to the health-care law, becoming the first Tea Party-backed House lawmaker to publicly back off the fight that is shut down the government for four days.

Ross, ranked among the House’s most conservative members by both the Club for Growth and the American Conservative Union, said he shifted his position because the shutdown hasn’t resulted in changes to the Affordable Care Act, which started Oct. 1, the same day government funding ran out. The shutdown also could hurt the party, he said.

“We’ve lost the CR battle,” Ross, referring to the continuing resolution to authorize government spending, said in an interview. “We need to move on and take whatever we can find in the debt limit.”

I have seen mass hysteria take many forms in this country, but this one is just sad,...