"Whom will the public blame for debtageddon?"

Asks Ezra Klein, with prissily correct grammar and a neologism that reminds us of the recent Armageddon that wasn't: Carmageddon.

I'll tell you who I'll blame. I'll blame everyone who thought about the debt-ceiling crisis in that form, which reveals that it's all been jockeying for position in the next election. Interestingly, asking that question now is part of the jockeying.

Klein, ever biased in favor of Democrats, accordingly says:

In a 2010 paper presented at the American Political Science Association’s annual conference, Asger Lau Andersen, David Dreyer Lassen and Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen tried to take a systematic look at....

Oh! Good Lord! I'm crushed under the weight of the appearance of scholarship. Those names! Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen? A sketch comedy writer could not concoct a better name to exude the aura of pretentious loftiness.

But, hell! It's systematic.  No way it's ammunition for the partisan Klein to use to urge the GOP to... as they say... compromise.

... Voters don’t like budgetary breakdowns. More interesting was how voters apportion blame. “While governors are punished only when part of a unified government, legislatures are (almost) always punished.”
This suggests that when one party controls the government, voters blame them for budgetary breakdowns. But when the two parties split control, the executive is able to float above the squabbling in the legislature, or at least heavily influence the way the public assigns fault. “Governors may be more adept at the blame game that sometimes follows failures to finish a budget on time,” the authors speculate.

Got that?  The executive, Obama, may be able to "float above" the divided legislature, which is "(almost) always punished."

Got that, Republicans? You will be punished if you don't cave compromise.