I am not hanging on every bit of news coming out of the House, because it all seems to be bad. And I’m not sure the details really matter. It all boils down to a mob of bad, spoiled children stomping on everyone else’s sandcastles.

As I understand it, yesterday a group of what are generously known as “moderate” Republicans had a long meeting on Wednesday and worked out some kind of spending agreement that the whole House was supposed to vote on today. Whether it was a good agreement or a bad agreement, I don’t know. But guess what happened?

But any good feelings out of that meeting crumbled Thursday morning, when five Republicans — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Dan Bishop (N.C.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Eli Crane (Ariz.) and Matthew M. Rosendale (Mont.) — voted against advancing the measure to a final vote. Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) switched his vote from “yes” to “no,” which allows Republicans to bring up the motion again later if they have the votes.

This article doesn’t say why MTG et al. pulled the plug, but MSNBC is reporting that Trump has been talking to them and wants them to leverage the looming shutdown to “defund” the prosecutions against him. Trump posted on his failing social media platform, “This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!”

To which Matt Gaetz responded, “Trump opposes the continuing resolution. Hold the line.”

There has been much commentary pointing out that the nutjob caucus makes no sense. They can’t seem to settle on why they keep blowing up the apprpriations bills or what they really want. Yesterday Josh Marshall pointed to reports that the Republicans were debating whether to move the CR debate away from spending levels and toward border security. “It illustrates perfectly what most of us already know, which is that policy issues are just an excuse to shut the government down because it’s something Republicans like to do,” he said. And that’s true; I think the children see themselves as being bold and brave and blowing up the Deep State, or something. But they’ve also been talking to Trump all this time.

This a defense funding bill, people. The old Republican Party is dead.