So, are we going to have a crisis over the debt ceiling again? Everyone seems to assume that we won’t, that Republicans have learned their lesson, and that they’ll huff and puff before slinking away into the shadows. But there’s a problem: the GOP leadership has been telling the base to chill on the idea of shutting down the government to defund Obamacare, that they’ll use the debt limit instead. And so far nobody seems to have been willing to admit that this won’t work either.

And part of the problem may be, once again, the complete lack of actual policy analysis on the right. Apparently Eric Cantor is floating the idea of demanding a one-year delay in Obamacare in return for not forcing America into bankruptcy; Greg Sargent emails a Republican aide for clarification, and get this reponse:

It’s absolutely one of the possible outcomes of a debt limit negotiation, and likely given the President’s proclivity for delaying sections of this law. Whether it’s a mandate delay, or delaying the law entirely, it depends on a great deal of other factors.

OK, this represents a complete failure to understand how the health reform works. As I’ve tried to explain, three things are essential: nondiscrimination, the individual mandate, and subsidies. Other things, like the employer mandate, can be delayed without undermining the basic working of the plan. But Republicans don’t know any of that; they haven’t tried to understand Obamacare, they’ve just denounced it. And so they mistake Obama’s flexibility on side issues for a willingness to retreat on the essentials, which he won’t do.

In other words, the wonk gap might cause the GOP to stumble into disaster.