They certianly tried. I saw lots of attempts from the "liberal media" to float the Idea that this was just another bothsides problem. Not sure how it didn't work out for them and I'd like to study it. My guess is it was just too fast for anything dumb to "go viral". The narrative that a shut down was a bad thing even surprised me - republicans all but campaigned on the idea that it was a good thing to shut down government; and won the house on that narrative. The media seemed a little blindsided by their own narrative that actually a shutdown was a bad thing. Too bad they failed to mention that in 2022 or maybe we wouldn't have a republican majorty trying to shut down government.
And they are definitely going to. They need to crash the economy to stop Biden from getting any credit for fixing it - above all, republicans don't want anyone to know that economic policies that don't involve giving more money to the rich can work out. Their problem seemed to be this time the media was not on their side. But they only kicked the can down the road and gave themselves a month to figure out how to get the media to blame democrats.
My guess is McConnell is still absolutely furious with Trump and his supporters, so for once, pushed the media to hold the Maga republicans in the house accountable to their words.
I don't understand why everyone caved to pulling Ukraine funding, though. That's a Putin's Maga wishlist item and everyone who voted for the bill on both sides said they were against removing it, and yet they voted for it. I suspect it was just to avoid embarrassment. The Maga agreed not to vacate the chair if everyone agreed to take Ukraine funding out. This saves democrats face because then they don't have to put themselves on the line to bail Mccarthy out if Maga does try.
