Josh Barro at the Business Insider makes the appropriate observation:

House Republicans Show Themselves To Be Dangerously Incompetent, Again

The only stunning thing is that anyone still looks at House Republicans and says: “You know what would be great? Giving these people more power over public policy.”

Roughly one-third of this caucus thinks hitting the debt ceiling and shutting down the government are great strategies to try to stop Obamacare. The other two-thirds of the party has realized all along that this strategy sucks, but they could not find any way to stop their party from implementing it — even though these “reasonable” Republicans outnumber the crazies.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) was on CNN today saying that his party’s strategy for the last month has been lunacy. Well why the hell didn’t he do anything to stop it? Why didn’t he join with Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and stop the shutdown in its tracks on Sept. 30? Where is his sense of responsibility?

Can you imagine the situation this country would be in if Republicans controlled both houses of Congress right now? Or if we had a President whose administration gets jerked around by Heritage Action in the same way that House Republicans do? It would be a trainwreck, and “reasonable” Republicans like Nunes would still be on television saying they understand it’s a trainwreck, but by golly, operationally, they had no way to stop it.

There is no serious argument for Republican governance right now, even if you prefer conservative policies over liberal ones. These people are just too dangerously incompetent to be trusted with power.

Over at The American Conservative both Daniel Larison and Rod Dreher say the same thing.

Larison is a little upbeat:

As ridiculous as this makes Boehner and the House GOP look, it is an acceptable outcome for the rest of us. Having forfeited any constructive role in the mess that they helped create, House Republicans will now be left to vote on a Senate deal that avoids the worst consequences of their folly for at least a few months. As Altman and Miller recount, this sort of last-minute dodge has become commonplace over the last two years.

Dreher refers to them as the Strangelove Republicans but in his closing paragraph says this:

Yes. I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I hope the House flips to the Democrats in 2014, so we can be rid of these nuts. Let Ted Cruz sit in the Senate stewing in his precious bodily fluids, and let Washington get back to the business of governing.

The old school conservatives are upset.  I do believe the Tea Party craziness that we are suffering through is a result of the fact that the crazies in the base are the ones who primarily show up to vote in primary elections so we end up with a third of the Republicans in the House being ignorant and crazy.  And there is of course the total lack of leadership from the Speaker Of The House, John Boehner who could have ended all of this weeks ago.