The shutdown poll numbers for Republicans are dreadful. The media coverage, even from conservative opinion leaders, is even worse.
In fact, two weeks into the standoff, the real challenge for writers is coming up with sufficiently novel comparisons for the GOP ultras who started the whole thing: Even the most far-fetched analogies have already been spoken for.
Here's a brief guide:
Colonel Walter E. Kurtz
“‘They told me,' Martin Sheen’s Willard says to Marlon Brando’s Kurtz in Apocalypse Now at the end of a long journey up the river, ‘that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.’” -Ross Douthat, New York Times.
V.I. Lenin
“It’s a pure Leninist strategy — heighten the contradictions to help hasten the collapse they are certain is inevitable.” -Jonathan Chait, New York
Leon Trotsky
“The Tea Party’s takeover of congressional Republicans is happening so thoroughly that even Trotsky, a revolutionary whose supporters advocated radicals joining and capturing more moderate parties, might have blushed.” -Richard McGregor, Financial Times
The Weather Underground
“The current crop of congressional Republicans have more in common with the Weather Underground of the 1960s than they do with traditional Republicans, including the man they claim to venerate, Ronald Reagan.” –David Horsey, Los Angeles Times
Maoists
“It is scary that the art of governance appears to be dying out, partly a victim of the GOP's Cultural Revolution.” –Michael Hirsh, National Journal
The American (Know-Nothing) Party
“The swift demise of one half of the Whig Party split should be a sobering lesson for Republicans even beyond the near certainty that Democrats would clean up against a divided opposition in the immediate aftermath of a split.” -Paul Rosenberg, Salon
Sonny Corleone
“On one side we have Sonny, the hotheaded, impulsive, shoot-now-take-names-later son of Don Corleone. On Capitol Hill, he personifies the tea party followers who would rather die on principle than live to win a later day.” –Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post
Osama Bin Laden
"That would be Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who grabbed headlines by speaking for 21 hours against Obamacare. Cruz is neither Michael nor Sonny but the star of his own movie. He’s Ted bin Laden — the guy who hands out suicide vests and then goes to lunch." –Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post
The Jacobins
"No doubt, Boehner would prefer not to have to contend with such a mess. But he's already dealing with a historic muddle caused by his own Jacobins." –David Corn, Mother Jones
The John Birch Society
“When Robert Welch and his John Birch Society continued to allege that establishment conservatives were in cahoots with the Soviet Union, Buckley essentially ejected them from the conservative movement….The question is whether the conservative movement of today will remember that lesson.” –Christopher Parker, The Monkey Cage
Joe McCarthy
“I think it’s important because it’s the only comparable time since Joe McCarthy we’ve had this in the Republican Party.” –Carl Bernstein, “Morning Joe.”
Occupy Wall Street
“Achievable results, even reasonable demands, are irrelevant. What the revolution needs is fearless consistency. Movement conservatism, meet Occupy Wall Street.” –Michael Gerson, The Washington Post
Poujadists
“With the rise of the Tea Party, America’s version of Poujadism, the party’s populist wing has sought to exercise more control, and in opposing the Affordable Care Act it has found its latest rallying cry.” –John Cassidy, The New Yorker
Conservative American Republicans
“So we don’t have to look any further than our own past to find exact cognates for today’s movement to the right. The fever won’t break, because it’s always this high.” –Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
Major T.J. "King" Kong
“End game is Ted Cruz riding nuclear bomb while waving confederate flag” –Jason Cherkis, Huffington Post (on Twitter)
with reporting help from Mimi Dwyer, Alec MacGillis, and Marc Tracy