The simplest way out of the box you find yourself in with your idiotic Tea Party members is to draft a bill which raises the debt ceiling with no deficit-cutting amendments. It takes 217 votes to pass a bill out of the House. There are currently 193 Democrats and 240 Republicans. If you brought up a clean bill you’d get nearly all the Democrats and enough of the non-insane members of your own party to pass it. Then it could be sent on to the Senate, where I’m pretty sure it would pass pretty easily. Senate Republicans like to think of themselves as statesmen (I’m not sure why) who put country before party (well, except Mitch McConnell), and I imagine that nine of the forty-seven would vote for a simple raise to the ceiling, thus breaking any filibuster possibility.
Yes, you’d probably lose your Speakership, but do you really want to keep that job after your experiences of the past six months?
As for John of Orange wanting to keep his job after what has happened over the last six months, the cynical side of me would say…”Yes”. That is the sad part.
The Tea Partiers (and their neo-con backers) do not see all of the bills that have been racked up by Reagan and the two Bushes. All they see is the opportunity to damage the Democratic Party. And that is truly scary.