I CAN'T SEE HOW THE GOP WINS THIS DEBATE

Sure, the 20% who are idiots want them to shut the government down but the consequences would be devastating to America and the rest of the world.  From an article in ESQUIRE:

The only problem, according to the banker, was that everything else really matters, and not just in human terms — in economic ones. The world's largest economy can't just stop spending the trillion-plus dollars it acquires through debt each year without putting itself and the rest of the world in peril. What worried the banker about missing the August 2 deadline was not that it would initiate a credit crisis but rather deepen the recession, to the extent that the markets will have to force Congress's hand in the same way that the markets forced Congress's hand when Congress didn't pass the first TARP bill in 2008. Congress won't be risking the country's all-important credit rating if it doesn't raise the debt ceiling; no, it will just be risking economic turmoil.