(Boehner on Passing Clean Continuing Resolution: 'Not Going to Happen')

You would think that Boehner was a moderate these days except for his behavior in the above video, but it seems that there may be a few other moderate Republicans left in the GOP who are sick and tired of having their party run by freaks and nuts.

For almost three years, the story in the House has been about Speaker John Boehner’s restive right flank causing him problems. But Republican moderates have apparently had enough.

In what is by far their boldest stand since the GOP took control of the House in 2010, a group of them are threatening to bring down a vote on the rule for the government-funding bill scheduled for 6:30 p.m.

New York representative Peter King is leading the charge, and his fellow New Yorker Michael Grimm is close behind him. The group told leadership on Saturday they have 25 members who are willing to bring down the rule.

That number of defections would defeat the rule, which, like all such votes, is a party-line affair. “How many of them are going to follow up today with the pressure and everything else, I don’t know,” King told me in a phone interview.

King wants to pass a clean continuing-resolution bill. “This is going nowhere,” he says about the standoff with Senate Democrats. “If Obamacare is as bad as we say it’s going to be, then we should pick up a lot of seats in the next election and we should win the presidency in 2016,” he says. “This idea of going through the side door to take something you lost through the front door — to me, it’s wrong.”

Peter King, who is looney tunes in his own right, can read the polls and he knows that if the government shuts down, the GOP will be blamed for it.

If the federal government shuts down starting Tuesday because of a bitter partisan battle over the new health care law, more people say congressional Republicans rather than President Barack Obama would be responsible, according to a new national survey.

UPDATE I: Byron York writes that there's only 30 House Republicans forcing the Obamacare fight into the CR.

There are 233 Republicans in the House. Insiders estimate that three-quarters of them, or about 175 GOP lawmakers, are willing, and perhaps even eager, to vote for a continuing resolution that funds the government without pressing the Republican goal of defunding or delaying Obamacare.

On the other side, insiders estimate about 30 House Republicans believe strongly that Obamacare is such a far-reaching and harmful law that the GOP should do everything it can --- everything --- to stop it or slow it down. That includes precipitating a standoff leading to a government shutdown. "This isn't just another bill," Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., one of the most vocal of the 30, told me. "This isn't load limits on turnip trucks that we're talking about. This is ... an extremely consequential bill that will impact every American, and that's why you have such passionate opinions."

David and I wrote in our book, Over The Cliff, that when the Republican poobahs welcomed the insane caucus of people populating their ranks, this was inevitable. So why aren't the rest of the Republican House members fighting back?

Another 20 to 30 GOP members sympathize with that position but might be willing to compromise, except for the fact that they fear a primary challenge from the right. In the continuing resolution fight, it is the 30 most committed members, along with their 20-30 allies in the next-most-committed group, who are setting the House Republican agenda. The ones pushing for a fight over Obamacare, even if it leads to a shutdown, are controlling what the House does.

They are scared shi*less of their Tea Party freaks.

UPDATE II: John Boehner seems to be stopping the moderates from jumping ship unfortunately and keeps putting poison pills into their new bills.

The House pushed ahead Monday night with yet another bill to fund government that seemed destined to fail, inching the U.S. government closer to a shutdown.

House Speaker John Boehner's latest proposal to fund the government would chip away at Obamacare by delaying the individual mandate and barring the federal government from contributing to the health insurance of the president, lawmakers and staffers.

There's only a few hours left before we have a shutdown.