The rider isn't the "deal breaker." The rider is just a convenient platform to jawbone their base. If there was nothing at all about Planned Parenthood in this bill, the Democrats would be fighting just as hard.

They've gone nuclear over spending cuts amounting to one or two percent of this year's budget. Two to four percent of this years deficit. It's glaringly obvious there are going to be no serious proposals on budgets from the Democrats. They punted last year because they had nothing but fiscal destruction to offer and they knew it would be electoral suicide. They got clobbered anyway.

Now they have no proposals, no budget of their own, nothing except the primal imperative to destroy their opposition at all costs.

The Left is literally insane. The last election and Obama's record of abandoning his base on issue after issue have sent many of them over the edge. If they don't get their way, they're determined to take the whole thing down with them. This gives them a negotiating advantage, same as anyone wearing dynamite around their waist. I fear the Republicans are going to back down. On a two percent spending cut.

Democratic ideology: "The country is in ruins. Do we have power? Then it's a win." There are far, far too many historical - and current - examples of this worldview to dismiss it.

This is going to a very long year and a half.

Sidebar: Democrats wondering why Republicans aren't thanking them.