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The big news tonight is that John Boehner has shelved plans to vote on his debt ceiling proposal. Why? Because he couldn’t round up enough Republicans to vote for it. A hardcore rump of tea party nihilists is now treating him the same way that he’s treated President Obama for the past few months: rejecting every deal offered, regardless of how good it is or how much harm rejection will do to the country.

It would be easy to shed crocodile tears about this, but there’s really nothing here to gloat about. It’s just undiluted bad news if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Whether D-Day comes on August 2nd or — thanks to better-than-expected tax receipts — a few days after that, hardly matters. We’re not only headed for unprecedented fiscal chaos when it comes, but we’re taking a real risk of throwing the country back into recession too. Granted, that’s the Armageddon scenario, and things might not turn out that badly in the end. But I’d just as soon not take the chance. Our economy is just too fragile to risk it.

But it’s possible — barely — that there’s some good news here. If Boehner can’t get the tea partiers in the House to support his proposal, and if Harry Reid can’t find 60 votes in the Senate for his, then pretty shortly they’ll figure out that there’s only one way to pass something: forge a compromise that can get substantial support from both Democrats and non-tea-party Republicans. Such a compromise is almost certainly available, and all it takes to get there is for Boehner to be willing to admit the obvious: the tea partiers just aren’t willing to deal, period. They want to burn the house down so they can build something better from the ashes. They’re insane.

So walk away from the tea partiers. Instead, strike a deal that a hundred non-insane House Republicans and 20 or 30 non-insane Senate Republicans can support. Add that to a majority of the Democratic caucus and you’re done. You’ve saved the country.

It won’t be as a good a deal as Republicans could have gotten a month ago. What’s more, it would take some guts from Boehner, who might very well be jeopardizing his speakership if he does this. But it will save the country. Surely that’s still worth something?