The Thelma and Louise Caucus, a/k/a the Tea Party, is driving a convertible toward the canyon at high speed. Unfortunately, this time, we are all in the car.
Thelma (Ted Cruz) and Louise (Louie Gohmert) are at this moment compiling their ransom demands. As Steve Benen points out, there's a plan afoot to (for the moment) give in on the government shut down strategy and put all their loony eggs in the much worse default basket.
The only thing that will stop them short of the cliff is a list of ransom demands that reads like a "greatest hits/wet dream/wish list" of tea party demands:
* A delay in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act;
* Approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline;
* The elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau;
* A tax-reform blueprint Republicans consider acceptable;
* A block on combating the climate crisis;
* The elimination of Net Neutrality;
* An extension on destructive sequestration spending cuts;
* Scrapping elements of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law;
* Medicare cuts;
* Tort reform;
* Maybe a ban on late-term abortions.
Apparently, the list was compiled by taking notes while listening to Rush and watching Fox for a day.
As Ted Cruz said after his phony filibuster:
Nice little country you have there . . . would hate for it to default on its debt and plunge the world into economic catastrophe.