When even the Wall Street Journal's editorial board sees dangerous weirdness to its right, it's time to press Armageddon's pause-button and at least for a moment savor the procreation of pseudoconservatism's third partyness. The WSJ:
Strangely, some Republicans and conservative activists are condemning [Boehner's proposal] as a fiscal sellout....
The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue, and the public will turn en masse against ... Barack Obama. The Republican House that failed to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all blame. Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor.
This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell into GOP Senate nominees.
The likes of whom, along with the Bachmanns and Palins and Perrys, will be running again but as wholly irrelevant third-Tea-Party children, draining GOP votes but on the upside liberating that party from its present madness.
Behold, a return to two-party sanity, just as soon as our colossal nervous breakdown is over and the tea-party brats have been sent to their own sandbox.