I'm not a psychiatrist, therefore I've no medical opinion on whether the Tea Party caucus -- which, says Dana Milbank, one GOP aide now refers to as the 'Default Caucus' -- is clinically imbecilic, just damn stupid, or actually mad.
In my politico-historical opinion, however, the Tea Party/Default Caucus practices political insanity in somewhat the way that a Whitey Bulger might plead himself criminally insane. That is, no fundamentally rational pol would interpret his demands as incontestably superior to all others' in political society, especially when his demands are reflected by such a tiny minority of likeminded extortionists, and no fundamentally rational pol would be willing to exact so much innocent blood, if his demands aren't met.
Unless, of course, such manifest irrationality is largely a show -- for a jury of carnivorous primary voters, for pseudoconservative talk-radio jocks, for some Sammy the Bull "pledge"-enforcer, and so on.
As Milbank further notes, the Tea Party's insanity plea has been crucial to their political tactics in the debt-ceiling furor:
According to negotiation "game theory," the Default Caucus has boosted Republicans' leverage. "Your hand is greatly strengthened if you can convince the other side that you’re crazy," said James Miller, an economist at Smith College. It has enabled House Speaker John Boehner to tell the president: The Tea Party has locked our steering wheel and we can’t swerve — so you have to.
Ah, but as novelist Joseph Heller has observed, there's always a catch. Which is to say, if your rationally plotted objective is to convince the other side that you're crazy, then you aren't really (really) irrational. You may be an irredeemable sociopath, you may be a carnival-barking swindler, or just a judicious coward -- you may be many unpleasant or untoward things, but at your tactical core you cannot by definition be hopelessly irrational, since your objective requires a remarkable element of the cunningly thoughtful.
It is here that the Tea Party/Default Caucus has overplayed -- Yossarian-like, without the humor -- its hand. Repeatedly it has appeared before the body politic and flight-surgeon Obama to plead its insanity: and though the flight surgeon spotted the self-cancelling ruse from the start, it has taken the body politic some time to realize that madmen don't declare themselves mad; nor in declaring themselves mad do they correspondingly declare the object of their violent madness to be profoundly sane -- and perfectly harmless.
It might help, but one needn't be clinically crazy to be a sociopathic-policy nitwit, or a paradoxic anarchist of authoritarian-personality disorder, or a retro-nihilist of socioeconomic 'Ozzie and Harriet' or even 'Gunsmoke' impossibilities. But that's what these clowns -- the Tea Party/Default Caucus -- are. And they stand ruthlessly exposed -- by President Obama, practicing flight surgeon.