What has surprised me about this issue is how so much of the media has automatically adopted the Democrats narrative (especially on point #1, see below). Surprisingly, the media stories covering this shutdown are actually pretty fair in their summary (at least with respect to point #1).

The Democrat narrative has at least three elements:

(1) The House Republicans are unwilling to compromise and will shutdown the government if they can't get rid of Obamacare. (2) This will ruin the economy. (3) America should pay its bills.

So much of the media has ignored the Republican narrative:

(1) Senate Democrats and the President are unwilling to compromise and will shutdown the government if they can't keep all of Obamacare. (2) Excessive government spending hurts the economy. (3) Going deeper into debt is not paying ones bills.

Like I said, surprisingly the latest blurbs about the shutdown actually focus on Congress as a whole not being able to compromise and come to an agreement instead of focusing only on the GOP or Tea Party.