If this post from Political Wire is true, and I have no reason to disbelieve it, then House Speaker John Boehner has quite a dilemma on his hands for the next couple of days.
The Tea Party Caucus is serious in their demands that the debt ceiling not be raised at all, and it wouldn't matter whether Mr. Boehner or President Obama was requesting that they accede to it. This puts the Republican Party, and the country, in a huge bind. How is Boehner going to get enough Tea Party members in the House and convince Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to get at least 3 Democrats in the Senate to vote for the same bill?
That would be a feat that another Harry, the one named Houdini, might have difficulty producing out of a hat. Perhaps we might get a decent bill if Reid, Obama and Boehner were tied together in a straitjacket and dunked in a pool of water.
In the end, Congress will vote to raise the debt ceiling because the stakes of not doing so are too high. But the process has been so messy and prolonged that neither party can claim any moral high ground and it won't produce what the nation desperately needs: more jobs.
This is not America's finest hour.
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