As the markets begin their full-on freak out over the failure of Washington to raise the debt ceiling, I must confess to having a semi-out-of-body experience about the whole thing.  The American in me is simply appalled by the stupid, self-destructive behavior that led to this thoroughly avoidable apocalypse.  The political scientist in me, however, is utterly fascinated by the whole shebang.  I understand that wartime photographers have the same kind of problem -- I wish they had a word for it. 

So, taking my American hat off and putting my poli sci hat on, I find it fascinating that House Speaker John Boehner is having so much difficulty whipping a debt ceiling bill that is already a dead letter in the Senate.  Conventionally, whipping is done through a mixture of cajoling, coercing and cash -- with an emphasis on the latter.  A pet project here, a pet project there, and presto, you have a majority. 

The problem is that the nature of the GOP House caucus, combined with the party's anti-government ideology, has stripped Boehner of everything but the cajoling.  First, here's the Politico story on last night's whip effort:

Boehner and his top lieutenants worked deep into Thursday night trying to find a just-right solution that would attract 216 votes for the package of $900 billion in new borrowing authority, $917 billion in spending cuts over the next decade, and a process for entitlement and tax reform legislation that could lead to $1.6 trillion or so in deficit reduction and a second increase in the debt limit.

They don’t have available to them the same tools as past Republican leadership teams: There are no earmarks to hand out, nor any to take away, for example.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of the last holdouts and a candidate for the Senate in Arizona, spoke of how “refreshing” it was to see a lobbying effort bereft of the legislative grease that used to secure last-minute votes in the House. He said the vote-building would have “cost $20 billion” in the past.

Yes, it's totally refreshing.  It's also totally f**king useless, because Boehner isn't trying to cajole moderates, he's trying to cajole ideological hardliners.  David Weigel explains in his wrap-up:

The Republican dilemma quickly revealed itself. In other situations where a majority party needed to grind out a few final votes, it called on members who agreed with the concept of legislation but quibbled with the text....

John Boehner and Eric Cantor couldn't sell their Republicans in the same way. Their diehards never wanted to raise the debt limit. They had supported a strict, doomed version of a debt ceiling deal, Cut, Cap, and Balance, which did that, but even then, they weren't really comfortable with the concept of what they were doing. They did not want to raise the debt limit. Their constituents were uncomfortable with the idea, at first. And now they were being asked to raise the limit, without the conditions they liked, because... why? Because they were told that failing to do so would give Barack Obama all the leverage in the debt fight. That was too clever by half for some Republicans. More than 24 Republicans, it seemed.

Tonight, reporters stalked outside the offices of Boehner and Cantor as members walked in and out for meetings. This wasn't like health care, or even the continuing resolution. We were watching diehard conservatives, who had never wanted to raise the debt limit, and who had never done so in their careers, being begged for votes. As the night dragged on, the visitors did not look like the sort who could cave on big, existential votes. Louie Gohmert, one of the diehards who believes that Tim Geithner is lying about the threat of default, was dragged in. Tim Scott, the co-president of the freshman class, was dragged in; he walked out nonplussed, walked past reporters, and took out his iPod earbuds to confirm he was a "no." Roscoe Bartlett, an octogeniaran, who's not usually counted on for tough votes, entered the hot room telling reporters he didn't want to choose between "bad and really bad." The farce peaked when Gohmert joined freshman Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., for a prayer session in the House's chapel. It can't be good when members of Congress are literally asking for salvation.

If you are looking only to God for a clue about how you should vote, neither material incentives nor political rhetoric is gonna sway you.  And now you know why I think there's a 50/50 chance that no deal occurs  by August 2. 

UPDATE:  Megan McArdle has some similar reactions to the same Politico story as I did.

For those readers not keeping close tabs on the debt ceiling negotiations currently under way in Washington, here's how each participant views them:

Needless to say, this lose-lose bargaining deadlock has started to seriously exasperate Megan McArdle.  Today she asks a fair question:

I know I'm beating a dead horse at this point, but I continue to be mystified by what the base, the activists, and the politicians who are pushing the "no new revenue" stance hope to accomplish.  

Let's start by pointing out the obvious: the Democrats do not show any signs of caving.  They have offered what seem to be very attractive deals, and been turned down.  Think you're going to get a more attractive deal?  Every time another poll like this comes out, your bargaining position gets worse.  Moreover, in Washington, deals take time.  Even if Obama and the Democrats caved right now and gave the GOP massive entitlement cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, the government would be hard-pressed to hammer out the details, draft them into legislative language, get the CBO to score the cuts so you know that they're real, and then whip the votes to get the damn thing passed.  Every day you wait makes it less, not more, likely that you can get any deal at all.

Maybe you think the deadline is artificial and Treasury is just exaggerating.  I have been very much less than impressed by the arguments I have seen to this effect, because most of the people making them seem to be under the impression that on August 2nd Treasury can just start playing accounting games, when August 2nd is in fact the date when Treasury says it will have exhausted all the accounting games that we've previously used to finesse the debt ceiling.  But even if it were true, so what?  How does extending the crisis another month get us any closer to a deal?  What's going to change?

There's been a lot of online debate about this question.  Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal thinks this is just a matter of re-election motives, but I don't think it's that simple.  As Nate Silver points out, "there is a larger ideological gap between House Republicans and Republican voters than there is between Republican voters and Democratic ones."  Furthermore, many of the House GOP freshmen were elected in swing districts, so it's not as if they're representing only ultraconservative portions of the country. 

I'd attribute the strategy of the House GOP caucus to two factors.  The first is rhetorical blowback.  It's simply impossible for elected representatives to say "we're not going to raise the debt ceiling, we're not going to raise the debt ceiling, we're not going to raise the debt ceiling..." and then actually raise the debt ceiling.  And they really can't agree to the Mitch McConnell plan of "raise the debt ceiling with no concessions and then blame Obama."  They can't agree to any "grand bargain" on austerity because any such bargain would have to include tax increases and there's that darn pledge not to. Politicians do occasionally go back on flat-out pledges not to do something.  The example of George H. W. Bush to current GOP House members is not a good one, however.  With blowback, it doesn't matter whether a member of Congress really and truly believes what they're saying or whether they can't reverse course without exposing their political backside.  They're just as screwed. 

The second factor is even simpler:  to date the current Tea Party strategy of "no retreat, no surrender" has worked like political gangbusters.  Recall that the conventional wisdom in Washington in early 2009 was that the GOP was going to have to be in the wilderness for a couple of election cycles before moderating their positions and winning at the polls again.  The exact opposite of that scenario has occurred (see Erick Erickson on precisely this point).  The Tea Party movement has been built on uncompromising hardline positions, and has led to significant electoral and political victories.  As Joshua Green explains, even the exception proves this rule for Tea Partiers:

In April, [Speaker Boehner] narrowly skirted a government shutdown and, after extracting $40 billion in concessions from the White House, appeared to have emerged intact. But these concessions turned out to be less than advertised, which left many members of his caucus feeling betrayed - and therefore less, not more, inclined to submit on the debt ceiling.

Unless and until the Tea Party wing of the GOP pays a political price for its positions, they have zero incentive to change their strategy. 

Am I missing anything?