Until January 3, 2019, the Republicans hold both houses of congress and the presidency. If the Republican house wanted to keep the government open, they could easily have passed the extension that that senate passed on December 19, which the president could have signed. That only extends the deadline to February 8, so they can keep negotiating on the wall in the interim.Instead the president chose to shut down the government, apparently on the advice of Fox News pundits. (It seems we’ve reversed the model of state television which echos the ideas of the authoritarian power, here state TV is feeding the ideas to power.) The president requested the Republican house pass a budget with $5B of wall funding, which they did. The president stated publicly that the shutdown was his doing not the Democrats. The Republican senate went home without acting on this bill, which had no chance to get sixty votes in the senate.So this is a dispute between a Republican president and Republican Senate and a Republican House. If any Democrats are involved, they’re in the senate, where the sixty votes needed necessarily include a few Democrats. It’s clear Nancy Pelosi isn’t involved yet except as the boogeyman, presumably Hillary isn’t available.On January 3rd the now Democratic house will pass the exact same bill the Republican Senate passed. The Republican senate will be faced with the choice of consistency, passing the identical bill it passed the last session, or hypocrisy, not passing the identical bill. Given leader McConnell’s track record it could go either way.