Ezra Klein picks up on an important point in this morning’s Wonkbook:

Two issues led to the shutdown. One was defunding or delaying Obamacare. The other, as Sen. Ted Cruz put it, was “making D.C. listen.”

What’s been remarkable — and largely unnoticed — is that Republicans have abandoned both those demands.

…

What’s odder about the shutdown, though, is that Republicans have also abandoned their core policy demand. They’ve largely stopped talking about Obamacare. They’re begging simply for negotiations. Their latest plan, in fact, is for another budget commission:

The GOP’s play, announced by Cantor at the meeting, is to push for a bicameral commission that brought comparisons to the “supercommittee” from the 2011 Budget Control Act.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Paul Ryan articulates the emerging strategy. “To break the deadlock, both sides should agree to common-sense reforms of the country’s entitlement programs and tax code,” he writes. The word “Obamacare” never appears in the piece. Nor does any other reference to the president’s health-care law.

The Republican Party initially justified this shutdown and these tactics to itself by arguing that it was channeling the will of the people and justified by the dangers of Obamacare. But they’ve lost pubic opinion and realized Obamacare isn’t up for negotiation. But the loss of their original rationale for the shutdown hasn’t led them to reopen the government.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Boehner and Republican leaders first started by demanding the president defund or delay Obamacare. Speaker Boehner could not betray the Tea Party and split his party in half by bringing up a clean CR. Even if he had brought up a clean CR that also repealed the medical device tax, the Tea Party still would’ve been infuriated. It would’ve split the Republican party in half. This has clearly been the case all along and Boehner’s strategy has always been to slowly ratchet down GOP demands over time so that the Tea Party believes he fought for them. First it was defund Obamacare. Then it was delay Obamacare. After that it was delay the individual mandate. As Klein points out, GOP demands now have nothing to do with Obamacare.

Boehner knew all along Senate Democrats and Obama weren’t going to change the law. It was a non-starter. But he had to at least show his conservative members that he fought for them. Allowing a government shutdown to happen and drag out for a couple of weeks is a good way of showing them that.

His next step was to quietly switch demands from something unattainable to something possible. This was the toughest part as the Tea Party would revolt if it became clear he was giving up on their goal of stopping Obamacare. As Klein notes, this switch happened “largely unnoticed.” That’s a big victory for Boehner.

Now he still has to return to his party with some concession from the president. It doesn’t have to be much, but he can’t have chosen two major fiscal fights and return with nothing. He also must show that he fought as hard as he could – that means waiting until the last minute to make a deal. This is Boehner’s strategy in every one of these fights and it has succeeded repeatedly. In my first article defending Boehner, I wrote that his strategy is the following:

1. Lie to his caucus, allow them to “take control” and make it seem as if disaster will strike
2. Use that desperation to subtly change the conversation to the upcoming disaster and extract concessions from Democrats
3. Go back to his caucus, say he got everything he could and convince them to vote to avoid the crisis at the last minute
4. Keep his speakership by allowing himself to seem weak and extract some concessions
5. Lather, rinse, repeat

Allowing the conservatives members to “take control” required shutting down the government this time. But the rest is unfolding exactly as I wrote. He lied to his caucus about stopping Obamacare, allowed them to “take control” and is now using that desperation to extract any type of concession from Democrats in return for opening up the government and raising the debt ceiling. He’ll then go back to his members, say he got everything he could and we’ll avoid a default. The Tea Party will be angry, but not quite angry enough to challenge his speakership. Lather, rinse, repeat. The hardest part was switching his party’s demands from stopping Obamacare to a fiscal concession. Now that he’s done that, the rest isn’t too difficult. It’ll just take until the 11th hour to play out.