Rich Lowry

Refusing to negotiate is the new reasonableness.

After years of agonized media commentary about the failure of key players in Washington to sit down and work out their differences, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to win the fight over the government shutdown by rejecting all compromise, calling his opponents names and escaping blame in the press.

It is a gambit available only to Democrats, who are presumed, almost by definition, to be free of any responsibility for a shutdown. For his part, President Barack Obama says he won’t negotiate on the debt ceiling, so the current fight that De...