A Terrible, Tragic Game - NYTimes.com

That said, the speaker is wrong once again. This unfortunately is a game. It’s a game that he allowed himself to be pushed into playing and one he can find no easy way out of. It’s a game in which he thought the president would blink. But President Obama is staring straight ahead, wide-eyed like a long-haul trucker at 3 in the morning. This is a game in which the speaker cared more about keeping his job than about keeping the American government running, the people who work for it and those who depend on it.
It is most definitely a game, a terrible, tragic game that House Republicans are playing in the People’s House.