- Senator Mark Warner: "Enough is enough. Sequestration is stupid. Shutting down the government is stupidity on steroids."
- Timothy Egan: "Politically, the shutdown is terrible for a party trying to rebrand itself. When Bobby Jindal said Republicans have to 'stop being the party of stupid,' he swallowed a teaspoon of common sense. That's been washed away by a river of stupid."
- Paul Krugman: "These guys are cynical and dishonest - but they're also very, very stupid."
- Bill Keller: "The right-wing campaign to sabotage the Affordable Care Act has driven a lot of normally temperate people past the edge of exasperation. Pundits have described the crusade as crazy, stupid, arrogant, dishonest, cynical, ridiculous and politically suicidal. And that's not just liberals talking."
- Dave Weigel: "The OMB's shutdown instructions led to a number of closures that seemed, to neutral observers, pretty stupid."
- Paul Waldman: What … can I add about the latest twist in the pending government shutdown? How many different ways are there to say that the Tea Party Republicans are both crazy and stupid?
- L.A. Times Letter to the Editor writer: "Members of Congress, give up your stupid pride and compromise for once. No one can win, but we the people and the world can lose."
- Phil Plait: "I wish the ideologues who have shut down our federal government were able to take a step back from the precipice, from their own petty political needs, and see what they've done. NASA is the tip of the iceberg, I know, but it's a symbol of just how ridiculous, how embarrassing, and, frankly, how stupid this shutdown is."
- Associated Press: "Even some tea party people are balking, though. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a favorite of that group, has called closing the government 'a dumb idea.'"
- National Review: "The Coming Government Shutdown: A Dumb, Dumb, Dumb Idea."
