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If you thought the messaging troubles for the Republicans couldn’t get any worse…you were wrong. As ABC News reports, House Republicans managed to figure out a way to make themselves look even worse on the night that they failed to even call a vote on the debt ceiling:

Despite what some government officials have billed as a possible financial Armageddon looming four days away and with no viable deal yet reached to raise the debt ceiling, lawmakers took a break from the debt debate Thursday night.

What did they turn to? Post offices.

Eight post office naming bills came to the House floor just two days after the U.S. Postal Service announced its plans to close nearly 3,700 post offices this year in order to deal with its $8.3 billion budget deficit.

Yes, that looks really, really bad. But the good news is that it doesn’t look quite as bad as this:

So far this year, almost 50 bills to rename post offices have been introduced. Three of those bills have made it to the president’s desk, representing a full 13 percent of all legislation signed by President Obama this year. [Pols emphasis]

Throughout the previous legislative session, the 111th Congress introduced 427 bills to name post offices and passed more than 70 of them.

That’s right — a Republican majority in the House of Representatives has managed in seven months to do little else besides naming post offices. Incapable of governing? It’s getting harder and harder for Republicans to say anything otherwise.

Speaker of the House John Boehner was not able to corral Republicans on Thursday in time for a vote on his debt ceiling/deficit plan. The vote is now supposed to happen on Friday, and the stakes may never be higher for Boehner.

From Salon:

It is still, at this point, nearly inconceivable that Boehner’s bill could go down in flames. Because if it does, intransigent House conservatives will have handed President Obama one of the biggest victories of his term.

Here’s why: The Boehner bill is already a conservative bill that won’t pass the Senate. But if House Republicans can’t pass it on their own, they will have conclusively demonstrated that it will be impossible for them to come to agreement on any kind of compromise deal acceptable to both parties. They will have effectively declared themselves incapable of governing. [Pols emphasis]

In that situation, President Obama would have foolproof political cover to take dramatic action, such as declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional under the grounds of the 14th Amendment, or simple “necessities of state.” If the House can’t pass the speaker’s own bill, with the entire nation (and the world) watching, with Wall Street on edge, and most amazingly of all, already having secured a deal that includes significant spending cuts without any revenue increases, House Republicans will be exposed as both irresponsible and incompetent.

This kind of thing just doesn’t happen. It is very very rare for the majority party to bring a major bill to the floor without knowing how the votes will go down. The last time, in fact, is seared into our cultural memory: the failed vote on TARP that set off a major market meltdown.

But that wasn’t Speaker Pelosi’s fault. On that infamous day, John Boehner failed to deliver his caucus. If history repeats itself, Washington will be a different town, and Boehner will be a neutered political leader. And those of us who lived through this period will wonder how in the world this man managed to hold the U.S. government hostage for so long, when he couldn’t even control his own party. [Pols emphasis]

We’ve been saying for months that the Tea Party is killing Republicans, and there’s no better current example of that problem than the one that faces Speaker of the House John Boehner. From CNN:

Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, said Boehner “has a big headache inside his own caucus.”

“You’ve got senior members like Jim Jordan of Ohio, the head of the Republican Study Committee … which is the kind of conservative caucus about 40 years ago. It was a fringe group, a small fraction of the Republican Party. Now, it’s 80%,” he said.

Jordan came out against Boehner’s plan, saying that although he thanks him for fighting for GOP principles, “I cannot support the plan.”

Jordan and 38 other House Republicans have signed a pledge that he will not vote to raise the debt ceiling if aspects of the cut, cap and balance bill that passed the House last week aren’t included in the plan. Boehner admitted that his plan is “built on the principles” of that plan but doesn’t go as far as that bill would.

Chris Chocola, president of the conservative group Club for Growth, said Tuesday that his group cannot back Boehner’s plan.

“The Boehner plan does not achieve the goals of cut, cap and balance and doesn’t fix our fiscal mess,” he said. “We are urging club members to call their members of Congress and ask them to oppose it.”

The Cut, Cap and Balance Coalition, which includes more than 100 groups, argued that it understands the pressure on Boehner and congressional leaders to get a deal done before August 2 but said they should not exclude the cut, cap and balance bill. [Pols emphasis]

That last sentence is rich — basically the Cut, Cap and Balance Coalition is saying to Boehner, “We know you have a difficult decision to make, and we respect that…but you’d better do what we want.” Thanks for the support, everyone!