Where to begin? Well, one bit of punditry is as good as any other, so...
Let's begin with certain assumptions.
1) Money has always meant power or access to power.
2) Citizens United opened the floodgates for money to politicians from anonymous sources.
3) Parties, especially the Republican one, no longer control their candidates, if those candidates have sugardaddies, or small groups of sugardaddies, spending huge sums on their behalf.
4) Officials elected this way are bought and owned by their patrons to an extent not seen in this country in more than a century.
5) Clearly, the internecine fight being waged in the GOP between the Grand OLD Party and the "Tea Baggers" must reflect the interests of competing elites who own the various politicos thus engaged.
This "analysis" begs the question, who are these elites? Better yet, what are these interests?
Both sides want to reduce taxes on the rich, remove regulations from corporations and eliminate the social safety net. Only one really, really wants to tank the economy.
It has been my experience that if a terrible situation is permitted to persist without attempt to make improvements, someone, with power, is benefiting from the existing situation.
Who (i. e., what elite) would benefit from the tanking of the American economy, say, by causing the U. S. to default on its debts, forcing the Government to raise interest on its debt? That, in turn would raise interest rates all around.
By the same token, what elite would want interest rates to remain low?
My hypothesis is as follows: The business interests that make their money by making loans would like to see interest rates climb. The business interests which borrow money to invest in their businesses would like interest rates to remain low.
Testing this hypothesis would require knowing who owns the various politicos, especially those most determined to threaten the faith and credit of the government. Even patriotism, ususally "the last refuge of the scoundrel" is not flouted to cover up the insidious motivation here.
For other politicians, the threat may be a tactic to extract concessions from the Pesident and the other party, but the leaders of the pack seem interested in actually causing a default. If so, something that crazy cannot be a simple aberration, especially when it keeps coming back.
Then again, maybe we just have a bunch of "whacko birds" (to quote John McCain) in high places.