and I'll give you a reason.  Boehner isn't a madman, he incapable of providing leadership at this stage of the game.

And leadership is tough, when you get down to it.   First, accept the fact you're not going to be liked by everyone.   Boehner's restive party majority isn't organized.   The Baggers could have gotten everything they wanted if they knew what they wanted.   Part of being a leader is explaining goals to followers, I'd say it's the largest part.   Had he gone to the Tea Party and explained how things would look if the country was being run well, given them a vision such as FDR's famous Map Speech, he'd be a great leader.   Here's where we are, here's where we need to go, here's the problems we face getting there and here's how we're going to attack those problems.  

Spending isn't out of control, it's in the hands of people who have collectively gotten out of control.   Taxes and entitlements aren't the problem here, they're just symptoms.  Revenue is the problem because the economy is the problem:   whether taxes are high or low, revenue goes up and down with the economy and we have to get the economy turned around first.   It doesn't matter if your truck gets great gas mileage if it won't carry freight to market and pulling off the pollution controls won't put oil in the crankcase.

The problem, it seems to me, is that Republicans don't believe in the efficacy of government.   That's simplistic, I know, but they seem to operate under the idea, and it really is a small R republican ideal, that election gives them mandate to push the envelope of legality in the pursuit of power for the length of their time in office.   They do not see themselves as servants of the people or dedicated to the goal of a more perfect union.  

Increasingly, I'm tempering my own self-described Liberal thought patterns toward a modified form of Libertarianism:   insofar as government can be described as good, it punches above its weight class.   It does more with less.  It harnesses market forces to its own ends, never doing what can be more effectively managed in the private sector, leading by example, delegating where it can and effectively controlling what it must.   This country needs more jobs and lots of them.   We could get them if we were willing, as a people, to invest in ourselves, invest in education and infrastructure, not as make-work, but catching up on long-delayed and badly-needed repair work and overhaul of existing systems.  

Curiously, though I'm tending more towards Libertarian these days, and even quasi-Conservative thanks to the works of Oakeshott , I haven't given up on certain Liberal tenets.   We need more effective bureaucrats.  We'd get them if we'd tear down some of these ancient Acronymic bastions of bureaucracy and reorganize them as does the military from time to time.   These bureaucracies become self-justifying and self-perpetuating monsters.   When each was created, it served some purpose:  the FBI ramped up to solve the problem of interstate crime, the CIA for the Cold War, NSA for the era of satellite reconnaisance, TSA and Homeland Security in the wake of the War on Terror.   Creating new bureaucracy is government's predictable response to a new problem and they just never go away because they become political plums.   When I lived in Guatemala, I used to say an army without an enemy would invariably create one to justify its own existence.    The FBI is tucked away in the hills and hollers of West Virginia thanks to the personal power of Robert Byrd.   NASA is in Houston because of Lyndon Johnson.  The list goes on and on.   Look at all the new government consultants moving into their new buildings in the DC area, it's just monstrous.

I'm not changing my coat here.   I'm just tired of being lumped in with Big Government Liberals intent on solving the world's problems by legislating them away.   Yes we do need bureacrats, powerful bureaucrats:   unenforced laws are no laws at all.   But government's job is to do for us as a society what private industry cannot or will not do without direction and incentive.   I despair of Pragmatists, them and their short-haul solutions to everything.   Look at Obama and Boehner, half-o'-this and none-o'-that and we'll address that thorny issue after the elections.   Not a strategic bone in either of their bodies.

He's constantly getting in their paint and the GOP can't block.   Obama jumps, fades and the ball goes through the hoop.   Even though it's Romneycare writ large, they're still so mad about Obamacare getting through they have lost their tiny little minds.

there were plenty of moderate to liberal Republicans in the 50s, 60s and 70s. It wasn't until Reagan that the conservatives began to purge the party of moderates.

Some do and some don't. Some idiots and some cynics.

There are knowledgeable people who say there's really a chance they won't come to a deal.

And there are other very smart people (like Calculated Risk for instance) who confidently say this is all a charade and they will come to an agreement as they always have before. The markets seem to be seeing it that way.

My guess is there will be a deal, but the risk of default is more than negligible.