How Reid fared in government shutdown aversion

The deal is done. Now it's time for the Monday morning quarterbacking as pundits assess who were the winners in the agreement that averted a government shutdown.

According to Joseph J. Schatz of Congressional Quarterly, the three main players -- President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., "each had a great deal at stake, and much to lose."

"All three appeared to walk out of the negotiations with varying levels of success, and their political standing intact," CQ said.

Reid "was forced to accept more in spending cuts than he had wanted." But at the same time, the Nevadan "also seized the opportunity to show that he’d go to the mat for some of the party’s core priorities, like environmental protection, family planning and abortion rights."

Charles Babington of the Associated Press said Republican conservatives were the chief winners, success that was "all the more notable because Democrats control the Senate and White House."

But, Babington added, "more difficult decisions lie ahead, and it's not clear whether GOP lawmakers can rely on their winning formula."

Likewise, wrote Chuck Raasch of Gannett News Service, "this was mere prelude" to "far bigger battles on the 2012 budget and the debt ceiling that have already begun."

Manu Raju at Politico observed the irony that Planned Parenthood, which was in Republican crosshairs, was rescued by Reid, "a Mormon Democrat who personally opposes abortion and once ran political ads touting his anti-abortion stance."

"Reid has been a longtime opponent of abortion, but the abortion rights community now sees him as a leader of sorts..." Raju wrote on Friday. During Reid's three decades in Congress, "his rhetoric against abortion has softened considerably."

Ezra Klein, a liberal blogger for The Washington Post, wrote he was puzzled why Reid and Obama were talking positively about the agreement that cut $78.5 billion below Obama's original budget for the year.

"The Democrats believe it’s good to look like a winner, even if you’ve lost," Klein wrote. "But they’re sacrificing more than they let on. By celebrating spending cuts, they’ve opened the door to further austerity measures at a moment when the recovery remains fragile. Claiming political victory now opens the door to further policy defeats later."

Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, responded to Klein in a blog.

"Maybe (Obama and Reid) put country before party, and calculated that shutting down the government over what amounts to a fraction of a fraction of a vast federal budget would be horribly irresponsible, even if it made liberals happy and redounded to the Democratic Party’s short-term benefit. If so, good for them," he wrote.