When a party that controls Congress blames its rivals for a shutdown it caused, it isn’t strategy — it’s manipulation.

Control without accountability

Republicans currently hold the gavel in both chambers. They set the calendar, decide what comes to the floor, and determine which bills advance. Yet with the government shuttered and millions of workers unpaid, their message is simple: it’s the Democrats’ fault.

That framing only works if voters forget who’s actually in charge. The majority can call a vote, pass a continuing resolution, and end this at any moment. They simply choose not to — then insist the chaos is someone else’s doing.

The rhetoric of coercion

It’s a familiar pattern. Abusers say, “You made me do this.” Politicians say, “You made us shut it down.” Both flip responsibility to the victim, claiming their own powerlessness as justification for harm.

This is political gaslighting at scale — manufacturing harm, then demanding sympathy for causing it. The GOP’s strategy isn’t to govern but to perform grievance, to weaponize dysfunction and blame its targets for the fallout.

The filibuster fiction

Even in the Senate, where the filibuster still exists, the same party has the votes to change the rules. They’ve chosen not to. That restraint isn’t about principle — it’s about plausible deniability. The filibuster becomes a scapegoat, a way to preserve minority obstruction while pretending to be bound by process.

Source: Congressional Research Service

Damage as theater

The longer the shutdown drags on, the more it proves the point: suffering is the message. Each unpaid worker and closed service is another opportunity to point a finger elsewhere. It’s cruelty turned into campaign material — performative neglect wrapped in populist branding.

Accountability is the antidote

Democracy depends on responsibility matching authority. If you hold the gavel, you own the outcome. If you have the power to act and choose paralysis instead, that paralysis is policy.

“You made me do this” has never been a defense worth accepting — not in relationships, and not in government.