The 3 groups that define the government shutdown

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“How willing a candidate or incumbent was to close the government – and opposed to a compromise on Obamacare that would reopen it – looks like the base’s latest test of who’s a true believer or a squish,” Politico wrote this weekend.

So this small bloc of House members and senators have outsized clout. And they see little reason for compromise. Bachmann is leaving Congress in 2014, Massie represents a conservative district in a state (Kentucky) where Obama is very unpopular, Cruz is considering a presidential run as the champion of conservative activists.

3. The Silent Republican Majority

Most of the House’s majority, like the Tea Party members, don’t like President Obama or the health care law.  Some of them told me they are annoyed by Obama’s repeated declarations that he won’t negotiate with congressional Republicans. They are conscious of protecting their right flank from potential challengers. And the majority of them are quite conservative themselves.

At the same time, they are dubious of the shutdown-over-Obamacare approach, which they simply don’t believe is working. Many of them are ready for the party to reach a deal that combines ending the shutdown, increasing the debt ceiling and some minor conservative policy achievement, and then move on to other debates.

“This is what happens when you don’t have a strategy,” said one Republican House member, who did not want to be quoted criticizing the GOP’s approach.

So for many House Republicans, the best approach is to vote with the Tea Party conservatives and back the shutdown publicly while quietly urging Boehner to find a way out of it. (The members who are most prominently calling for an end to the shutdown are Republicans from places like New York, Pennsylvania and California, where Obama and Democrats are more popular and GOP members could lose their seats to Democrats). These Republicans would prefer to cast one series of votes unpopular with the conservative activists, instead of voting to end the shutdown today and then increasing the debt ceiling a couple weeks later.

The public and private debate between this group and the Tea Party conservatives will likely determine what happens over the next few weeks. Without the Tea Party faction pushing the debate to the right, most Republican House members could back a debt ceiling increase and government funding bill with minimal concessions from Obama. But these members will be wary of indicating that, with Tea Party conservatives ready to cast them as “RINO’s” (Republican In  Name Only).