One of the few conservatives really worth reading, Ramesh Ponnuru, offers us a look at The New House Plan. And it is ridiculous, as expected. As I noted earlier, the Senate bill is good because it is the result of an actual negotiation: Republicans get something they want in return for something Democrats want. This is what we all learned from Sesame Street. This day is brought to you by the letter “C” as in “compromise”!

The House Republicans are asking for a bunch more goodies. But most tellingly, they want to destroy the Reid-McConnell balance. In that bill, the Republicans got income verification in Obamacare and the Democrats got a delay to the reinsurance tax. Well, the Republicans want to take away the reinsurance tax delay. Why? I assume because they absolutely don’t want to give the Democrats even the smallest of concessions. Or it could be worse. They may think they could offer up this change as a concession later. Regardless, what this all means is that the House Republicans still aren’t seriously negotiating this stuff.

As Ponnuru notes, these are small concessions for the Democrats to make. But that hardly matters. It is not acceptable to reward the Republicans for their hostage taking. And as Ed Kilgore adds, “It’s not entirely clear whether this proposal could command enough Republican votes to pass without Democratic cooperation.” This takes us back to the Fiscal Cliff negotiations from last year. It doesn’t make any sense to deal with Boehner at all since he doesn’t really speak for more than a small hand full of his caucus.

Most concerning about all of this is the idea that Boehner might just pass his own bill and then send the House home. This is what Ponnuru tweeted this morning:

That would depend upon him passing this more reasonable bill. If it were, say, the Ryan budget, everyone would blame him for crashing the economy. If it seems that he is excepting relatively small concessions, he could at least make the argument he wasn’t to blame. Regardless, it would be the most dangerous move he could possibly make. My guess is that it is really like Nixon’s madman theory: Boehner wants to float the idea that he would do something he actually won’t.

Regardless of all this, I’m losing patience with the House Republicans. The crazies are the crazies. And Boehner doesn’t have much power, partly because the House has made it pretty hard to manage itself. (Bring back earmarks!) My anger is directed at the supposedly reasonable Republicans. I’ve never believed they were reasonable, but I had been counting on them to not be crazy, or even worse, nihilistic.