Robert Costa reports this morning:

In the coming days, the House will likely consider legislation that would establish a bipartisan negotiating group to resolve the current fiscal impasse. It’d include select members from both chambers, and once passed, it’d start immediately.

This sounds alarmingly similar to 2011’s deficit-reduction supercommittee, which could not reach bipartisan agreement of any kind and whose miserable failure led indirectly to the creation of the budget sequestration that nearly everyone hates, but is kept in place by Republicans who enjoy mutilating their nose to spite their face.

It seems increasingly clear that the House leadership is playing out the string in the hopes that Obama or Senate Democrats will crack.

Yet consider another report (also from the indispensable Costa) on the implacability of the Houses kamikaze-cons:

“They may try to throw the kitchen sink at the debt limit, but I don’t think our conference will be amenable for settling for a collection of things after we’ve fought so hard,” says Representative Scott Garrett (R., N.J.). “If it doesn’t have a full delay or defund of Obamacare, I know I and many others will not be able to support whatever the leadership proposes. If it’s just a repeal of the medical-device tax, or chained CPI, that won’t be enough.” Representative Paul Broun (R., Ga.) agrees, and says Boehner risks an internal rebellion if he decides to broker a compromise. “America is going to be destroyed by Obamacare, so whatever deal is put together must at least reschedule the implementation of Obamacare,” he says. “This law is going to destroy America and everything in America, and we need to stop it.”

Does this sound to you like there’s even a remote possibility that any deal, big or small, could pass muster with both Senate Democrats and 218 Republicans? If not, why are we putting the country through this? Why are Republicans inflicting real, immediate, and tangible harm on the economy in order to accomplish the impossible (delay or defund Obamacare) address an abstract future threat (debt) or merely to save face? Why isn’t the majority of the House majority isolating its rightmost faction and ending this pointlessly asinine pissing match?

Contra the conventional wisdom, I maintain that no one in leadership will lose his job. The very nature of Tea Party opposition, whether it issues from the likes of Bazooka Ted and His Gang in the Senate or the unappeasable Jacobins in the House, is to throw weight without consequence. They evince no interest in actually wielding power from the inside, which would require restraint, conciliation, and moderation. They are hysterics on the brink of utter demoralization. The danger they pose to democratic norms, institutional comity, and political functionality is precisely why they can’t be bargained with; they must be marginalized.

It’s time, Republicans: it’s time to throw the One Ring into Mount Doom.