Rick Hohensee holds a "Fire Congress" sign near the House steps on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday, October 8, as a partial government shutdown reaches its second week. The federal government entered a shutdown October 1, furloughing hundreds of thousands of workers. Many government services and agencies remain completely or partially closed. 
Officers stand at the base of stairs leading to the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, October 7. 
A bull elk appears to stick out its tongue at the closed north entrance to Yellowstone National Park in Montana on October 7 in a photo submitted by iReporter Brad Orsted. Orsted joked the animal was giving its opinion on the government shutdown. 
Tourists take photos at a barricade blocking access to the World War II Memorial in Washington on Sunday, October 6. 
River runners make camp in a dirt parking lot in Marble Canyon, Arizona, after being unable to access the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry on Saturday, October 5. 
A closure sign is posted on the National Mall in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Thursday, October 3. 
Tourists take photos of the Statue of Liberty while riding a tour boat in New York Harbor on October 3. The statue is adminstered by the National Park Service and is closed as a result of the government shutdown. 
A single security guard patrols the closed Lincoln Memorial in Washington on October 3. 
A U.S. Capitol police officer walks past a statue of Gerald Ford in the rotunda on Tuesday, October 1. The Capitol is closed to tours because of the government shutdown. 
Barricades around the World War II Memorial in Washington prevent people from entering the monument on October 1. The memorial was temporary opened to veteran groups who arrived on Honor Flights on a day trip to visit the nation's capital. 
World War II veteran Russell Tucker of Meridian, Mississippi, stands outside the barricade as he visits the World War II Memorial in Washington on October 1. 
World War II Veteran George Bloss, from Gulfport, Mississippi, looks out over the National World War II Memorial in Washington, on October 1. Veterans who had traveled from across the country were allowed to visit the National World War II Memorial after it had been officially closed because of the partial government shutdown. 
A park ranger secures a road at the entrance to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial on October 1 in Keystone, South Dakota. 
A sign is posted in the window of an IRS office in Brooklyn notifying that the office is closed due to the government shutdown on October 1. 
A visitor takes a picture of a sign announcing the closure of the Fort Point National Historic Site due to the partial government shutdown on October 1 in San Francisco, California. 
A hand-written sign informs visitors to Faneuil Hall, the nation's oldest public meeting hall, that restrooms are closed as a result of the partial government shutdown in Boston, on October 1. 
Visitors to Independence National Historical Park are reflected in the window of the closed building housing the Liberty Bell, on October 1 in Philadelphia. 
Mark Weekley, superintendent at the National Park Service's Lewis and Clark National Historical Trail, puts up a sign proclaiming the facility closed due to the federal government shutdown, in Omaha, Nebraska, on October 1. 
Hot Springs National Park employee Stacy Jackson carries a barricade while closing Arlington Lawn in Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas on October 1. 
The Washington Monument is seen behind a chain fence in Washington, on October 1. 
A National Park Service ranger finishes putting up a sign indicating all facilities at the Martin Luther King Historic Site are closed to the public in Atlanta, on October 1. 
A Capitol police officer walks through the empty Capitol Rotunda, closed to tours during the government shutdown on Capitol Hill in Washington, on October 1. 
An employee at the Springfield Armory National Historic Site in Springfield, Massachusetts, puts up a sign on October 1, to notify visitors that the site is closed because of a government shutdown. 
A U.S. Park Service police officer stands at the closed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington on October 1. 
A man looks into the closed Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington on October 1. 
A National Parks Service ranger posts a sign on the doors of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on October 1 notifying visitors that the church is closed. 
A U.S. park ranger places a closed sign on a barricade in front of the World War II Memorial in Washington on October 1. 
Park police and Park Service employees close down the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall on October 1. 
A sign informs visitors that the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial, west of Paris, is closed because of the shutdown on October 1. 
A man walks past a sign noting the closure at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Valley View, Ohio, on October 1. 
Members of the U.S. National Park Service close the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington on October 1. 
A U.S. park ranger posts a closed sign at the Lincoln Memorial on October 1. 
A sign alerting visitors that the National Gallery of Art is closed stands outside the building on October 1. 
People look at a sign announcing that the Statue of Liberty is closed in New York on October 1. 
Fencing around the World War II Memorial prevents people from entering the monument on the National Mall in Washington on October 1. 
Signs taped on museum doors alert visitors that the National Museum of American History in Washington is closed on October 1. 
A U.S. park service police officer stands guard at the entrance of the closed Lincoln Memorial on October 1. 
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- Gloria Borger: Republicans have quietly abandoned strategy to defund Obamacare
- She says they secretly knew it was hopeless but felt forced into it by Ted Cruz, others
- Borger says shutdown news overshadowed sputtering start to Obamacare
- She says Boehner is back to where he wanted to be: urging spending cuts for debt limit deal
(CNN) -- Just one week ago Republicans were united, railing against the man-made evil known as Obamacare. They hated it so much, they said, they would tie the funding of the government to the defunding of the dread program. Sure, they had tried more than 40 times to get rid of the plan before, but they had never done this: Attach the plan to kill it to a must-pass piece of legislation.
It was an idea born of necessity, some now tell me. Republicans in the House had been hit over the head in their districts by ads run by conservative political action committees (paging Sen. Ted Cruz, who appeared in some). The rap against them: They had not worked hard enough to slay the evil dragon. The charge, having been plastered all over TV, was leveled against them at town hall meetings over the summer.
They came back to Washington very angry at Cruz and Company. And in survival mode.
So the plan to defund Obamacare -- and tie it to a measure to fund the government -- was hatched.
Never mind that House Speaker John Boehner was already on the record saying he didn't want to do that. He had no choice but to capitulate: If he didn't adopt the strategy, he would face a revolt. Who wants that when you're just back from summer vacation?
So defunding Obamacare became the new war cry. It passed the House, went to the Senate, where Cruz then promptly told reporters it would die. At that moment, Cruz morphed from the Pied Piper of House Republicans into the man on the Most Wanted sign. He had left them out on a limb. "He's a demagogue," one senior House Republican told me, then going on to detail how Cruz was shooting "his own team from behind" and other choice descriptions.
So Cruz had no choice but to mount his own faux-filibuster, which went nowhere. The Senate passed a clean bill to fund the government, and the rest is history.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the national stage: The president decided not to cave, and Republicans treated this as if it were shocking that he would not gut his single biggest legislative achievement.
Shutdown endgame But something else happened, too. The health care exchanges -- the heart of Obamacare -- came online, and it was a mess. The White House that had been lauded for its technical acumen suddenly looked like a bunch of Luddites. The system crashed, bobbed and frustrated. The White House refused to release reliable numbers so the public's level of participation could be gauged.
It landed with one big thud, which would have been a big problem for the administration, except for this: Nobody was talking about it, because the country was preoccupied with the shutdown.
So Republicans had accomplished the seemingly impossible: They trampled their own message on Obamacare. They finally had a great hook. But what were they doing instead? Scrambling to find ways to re-fund parts of the government to curb public outrage.
Great strategy.
Oh, and by the way, we could wind up paying all of those furloughed workers. Sure, this isn't their fault. But look at it this way: A government drowning in red ink is paying people not to work.
Another great moment.
All of which brings us up to date in this dysfunctional story. So Obamacare had a crashing start, the government is shut down, and the deadline to raise the debt ceiling is a week away. And the debt ceiling, as you know by now, is the bigger problem: no Social Security checks, no Medicare, high interest rates, and on and on. Everyone -- save for some debt ceiling deniers -- believes it can't happen. So what to do?
If you look closely here, you will see that something very profound has changed: Republicans seem to have pressed the delete key on talk of defunding Obamacare. They can't get it done. Their poll numbers are tanking. They're panicking. And some cooler heads I have spoken with are privately making the same point: Wasn't it always unfair to promise people something the Republicans knew they could never deliver (defunding Obamacare)?
So Boehner, no fool, carefully turned the page on all of this, moving to the terra firma he always wanted to be on in the first place: deficit reduction. Tie a package of spending cuts to raising the debt ceiling, he says. That's what has always been done. We are being reasonable about this.
No, says the president. You're not being reasonable. You tried to kill my health reform bill, so no negotiation until you fund the government and raise the debt ceiling without anything attached.
In the end, they will probably find a short-term way to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling and continue to argue over spending and taxes. But the House GOP scheme, abetted by Cruz and outside conservatives, will become a case for the civics classes. A study of the newly perverse politics of our time, and how a government was brought to its knees over a fight only a few wanted to wage -- that everyone secretly knew could never be won.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gloria Borger.
