Republicans Beat the Retreat back to Paul Ryan + Free Syrian Army Implicated in Massacre

There is some confusion this morning about the possibility of a deal being reached between Republicans and Democrats on raising the debt ceiling. Conflicting reports from yesterday had Obama willing to sign off on a clean bill lifting the debt ceiling until November 22 without ending the government shutdown. As it turns out this was not the case. The Democratic position, reaffirmed by Senate majority leader Harry Reid, is that the government shutdown must end as well. Whether the GOP can get any deal through its caucus in the House is another question entirely.

All the to and fro yesterday of Democrats and Republicans meeting separately with Obama tended to obscure the real news of the last 48 hours -- the Tea Party demand that Obamacare be de-funded as the price to re-open government and lift the debt ceiling is now off the table. It is done, broadly acknowledged as a failure. A good story that captures the prevailing wisdom that the shuttering of government to coincide with the October 1 opening of the online health insurance exchanges has backfired is the Eric Lipton and Nick Confessore "Kochs and Other Conservatives Split Over Strategy on Health Law":

Opponents of the approach are arguing that conservatives would have been better served by trying to force an overall reduction in federal spending and tying that effort to the debt ceiling fight, a step the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity urged this week. Specifically, the group argues that stopping the health care plan should be a years-long effort to marshal what it says will be growing public animosity toward the law. That will help elect Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, which will repeal it.

Conservatives are tossing recriminations back and forth as they beat a retreat back to fallen angel Paul Ryan and an elusive grand bargain on the budget.

I slightly misspoke yesterday when I assumed that the basis for Ryan's budget proposal offered in exchange for raising the debt ceiling was his 2012 The Path to Prosperity block granting of Medicaid and privatizing of Medicare. Chastened from his shellacking in last year's presidential election Ryan's budget prescriptions are apparently more modest and focused. This is from Jonathan Weisman's "Ryan Is Again in the Forefront for the G.O.P.":

An opinion piece [Ryan] wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week laid out what has now become the House Republican plan: a debt ceiling increase tied to changes to Medicare and Medigap plans that would save more than enough money to ease some of the across-the-board cuts to domestic and defense programs; a fast track for the comprehensive simplification of the tax code; and a demand for immediate, serious and structured negotiations with the White House and Democratic Senate. 

The fact that Mr. Ryan’s plan quite obviously made no mention of the health care law as a bargaining chip quickly drew him scorn from some on the right, but to Democrats and more moderate Republicans, the sidelining of the health care fight immediately gave the plan credibility. 

He marketed his idea on Wednesday to the House’s hard-line conservatives in the Republican Study Committee, getting enough favorable reaction to pull in the Republican leadership. On Thursday, after Mr. Boehner presented it to the full Republican conference, it became the official Republican position. As Mr. Boehner laid it out to the public, Mr. Ryan stood silently behind him. 

On Friday, he will take his message to the Values Voters Summit, a meeting of social conservatives. But according to an advance text of his remarks, he will add words of caution: “This president, he won’t agree to everything we need to do. A budget agreement — with this president and this Senate — it won’t solve all of our problems. But I hope it’s a start. I hope we can get a down payment on our debt.” 

Republicans and Democrats said Thursday that the success or failure of this new path forward will rest on Mr. Ryan’s shoulders. Republicans hope that with Mr. Ryan leading the charge, Washington will finally grapple with the true drivers of the federal budget deficit: entitlement programs like Medicare that are swelling as the population ages. Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said conversations between Mr. Ryan and the senators he will need on his side had already begun. 

Democrats, closely examining the outlines of the Ryan plan, say he is showing a new modesty and a narrower vision than the one rejected by American voters in the 2012 presidential campaign. Back then, and even earlier this year, Mr. Ryan championed converting Medicare into a voucherlike program in which beneficiaries would be given fixed premium subsidies they would use to buy private health insurance. 

Now he is talking about means-testing Medicare to make richer beneficiaries pick up more of the tab and ensuring that taxpayers do not subsidize the private Medigap plans purchased by upper-income recipients to augment Medicare coverage. Versions of both of those proposals are in Mr. Obama’s budget for the current fiscal year.

It is hard to imagine that means-testing Medicare is going to mollify the fire eaters in the Tea Party caucus; there are not many realists in its ranks. The question is whether the Tea Party still has enough juice, now that conventional wisdom has coalesced around the idea that the shutdown and debt ceiling standoff has been an unmitigated disaster, to torpedo a deal based on Ryan's plan.

An important story worth mentioning is Human Rights Watch's report concluding that Syrian rebels committed "crimes against humanity" in an August 4 massacre of 190 civilians in Latakia province. Anne Barnard reports in today's New York Times that the Western-backed Free Syrian Army is implicated in the massacre and could be guilty of war crimes:

[A]t least 20 groups took part in the fighting, the report says, including some affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose-knit collection of mainly Syrian rebel forces the council is trying to organize. 

And in a video filmed nearby during the operation, Gen. Salim Idris, who leads the military council, is seen insisting that his forces played a leading role, in statements responding to criticism from Islamist groups that his fighters were hanging back. The report said it was unclear whether forces linked to General Idris took part in the initial Aug. 4 attack, when forensic evidence suggests most of the civilians were killed. But it also said that anyone continuing to coordinate with such groups could be complicit in war crimes. 

The Human Rights Watch report accuses the five leading fighting groups of crimes against humanity; names several private donors in Kuwait and other Persian Gulf countries as financiers of the operation; blames Turkey for allowing the fighters to use its territory; and calls for an arms embargo against the five groups, adding to its previous calls for such an embargo against the Syrian government. 

“Unified action by the international community is really long overdue when it comes to trying to deter these abuses and violations,” Ms. Fakih said, recommending that war crimes in Syria be referred to the International Criminal Court, which could investigate all parties.