But the House can't begin that process until it figures out what it wants to pass. It's fairly clear, as it has been for a long time, that enough Republicans would join with Democrats to pass an unamended funding bill for the government and, particularly now, an increase to the debt limit. When GOP leaders on Tuesday morning went before their caucus to present a counter-offer to the Senate compromise bill, they included elements that they hoped would assuage the concerns of their Tea Party members — elements that could potentially themselves be points of negotiation with the Senate, an ominous clock-tick in the background.

Instead, the House Republicans split apart at the seams, preferring to float the idea of reintroducing the same measures rejected on the first day of the shutdown — an exception to employer coverage of contraception clause, the amendment to end health care co-pays for congressional staffers. Not only are these obvious poison pills for the Senate, but, unlike when they were raised at the beginning of the month, this strategy has already been judged by the public. Republicans were warned that the attempt to leverage critical bills to get concessions on things they hated would poll poorly. Now we know that it has — the GOP is less popular than any party since Gallup started tracking that data. The public opposes this plan, adamantly. Never before, a new Pew Research Center poll indicates, have Americans been more willing to reject their sitting members of Congress. But far-right Republicans are committed to it.

The strategy from the start was to pass legislation that forced the Senate and Obama to choose between catastrophe and the Republican position. On October 1, the catastrophe the Senate and Obama chose was a modest one: a government shutdown that has become life-as-usual over the past half-month. The imminent debt default is not a modest one. It is significant. And so Republican conservatives appear to be willing to give the idea another shot.

Except that there's another thing that's changed since the first go-round on this strategy. On Monday afternoon, a compromise plan, supported by Senate Republicans and Democrats, offered a way to move a larger budget deal further down the road, while avoiding this looming default. In other words, the House Republicans' own party now opposes the course of action that the House seems poised to take. That wasn't the case in September, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, very aware that he has a primary contest coming up, was mum on the issue of preventing a shutdown.

The most egregious rumor — and it is just a rumor, albeit one with multiple sources — is that the Republican caucus will raise the stakes by physically leaving the capital after passing whatever it is that they intend to pass. There's little doubt that such a move would indeed put the president in a significant bind, perhaps necessitating that he step around the limits placed on his ability to respond to default.