........
You realize this is because the Tea Party wave of 2010, a sect of 30 or so people in the Republican House Majority, has thus far been telling the rest of their party, their Speaker, the Senate, and the White House how to run things?
~30 people. And don't you forget that. Republicans will try to call out Dems who aren't perfect by any means but this is a crisis manufactured by an incredibly small but ideologically insane group of people.
John Boehner is not doing his job -- you should know he has the power to bring the clean CR bill (what the Senate sent back) to the floor, and he would have had at least 100 Republican votes for that. Combined with Democratic votes, it would have passed just in time and there would be no shutdown.
When 30 people within a party that only controls one branch of Government are dictating the entire process thus far, that's all you really need to know, outside posturing be damned. The Tea Party's platform is one of pure lunacy, plain and simple.