John Boehner just bowed to reality for the third straight time, rather than choosing to create yet another meaningless self-imposed crisis for the American economy. There are metaphors a-plenty to describe today's events, but we're going with how one fellow Republican put it (who didn't even agree with Boehner when it came time to vote): "John Boehner was the adult in the room."

Boehner and his merry band of House Republicans just couldn't agree on which hostage to take, to put it another way. But Boehner did act like an adult, because he could see the path before him leading right off a cliff (once again), so instead he decided not to play a game he could not win. See what I mean? The metaphors just abound. But enough of this unseemly spiking of the football (whoops, there's another one...), because what just happened deserves more serious examination.

John Boehner has finally come to face the same reality Barack Obama faced about a year and a half ago: the Tea Party faction of House Republicans just does not care about governing. Compromise is impossible with them, because they view even uttering the word "compromise" as high treason to their cause. There is no way to meet in the middle of a chasm. The Tea Partiers will not deviate one tiny inch from their extreme and ideological position. In fact, they will turn and rabidly attack any apostate Republicans who even suggests such deviation.

This means negotiation is a waste of time. Which, as I said, Obama figured out at some point during 2012. Since then, Obama has held firm and refused to budge on his positions, and he has either completely won or mostly won, every single time. Boehner seems to be figuring this out, and is in the process of teaching the Tea Partiers a hard lesson, namely that the American public has grown very tired of absolutism. Holding hostages is no longer going to work, because it leads to one of three places, all of which are bad for the Republican Party. If Obama calls the bluff and Republicans immediately cave, it shows they were only playing politics and weren't serious about their hostage-taking in the first place. If Obama calls the bluff and Republicans go through with their threat, the American public immediately blames the Republicans, lowering their chances for re-election. If Obama calls the bluff and Republicans make good on their threat, eventually Republicans are going to have to back down, as they did in the government shutdown, showing the ineffectiveness of the whole hostage-taking tactic in the end.

What Boehner has learned to do is to fight these meaningless battles within his own caucus, for which he should be applauded. Since the end is truly a foregone conclusion (ever since Obama discovered his backbone), better to have the fracas behind closed doors where the voters don't see it. This go-round was a perfect example. Once again, the problem was that Republicans couldn't even agree on what legislative hostage to take. Boehner offered up three things he thought might be possible for Republicans to grandstand on, but couldn't get the votes within his caucus for any of them. One of them would have even worked beautifully, because it is a goal Democrats agree with -- reversing a pay cut for the military. Attaching this to the debt ceiling would have (at the very least) meant that both the debt ceiling and the "hostage" would have passed both houses and been signed by the president. That could easily have been spun as an enormous victory for Boehner, and a hike in status and power for his House Republicans: "We told the president we would not give him the clean debt ceiling raise he wanted, and instead forced him to restore the money to properly pay our military!" But even something which could have succeeded wasn't acceptable enough to the House Tea Partiers.

Boehner's real problem is that there are a few dozen Tea Party hardliners who have sworn never to vote for a debt ceiling raise under any circumstances whatsoever. When you subtract these votes, Boehner just does not have enough left to pass any debt ceiling bill without the help of Democrats. And Democrats refused to take any hostages at all. This led to Boehner's impossible position, where (as he memorably put it last week) he couldn't get 218 votes from his Republican caucus to even "declare Mother Teresa a saint."

This is where John Boehner did the adult thing, and threw in the towel. Boehner saw what happened when he let the Tea Partiers go ahead and shut the government down: utter chaos in his ranks. They had no idea what hostage to take, and they floundered around while the entire country took note of their ineptitude. Instead of doing so this time around on the floor of the House, Boehner announced that the Tea Partiers had made their point, and that because they had done so he would have to work with Democrats to pass the debt ceiling hike. Since Democrats would only support a clean bill, that is what Boehner moved forward with. Which just passed the House with over 190 Democrats and a few dozen Republicans. What is really impressive is that this happened two full weeks before we got to the crisis point.

This is the third straight time House Republicans have chosen responsibly governing over grandstanding. In December, a budget agreement was reached which was a compromise bill between the Republicans and the Democrats, and between the House and the Senate. Just like it is supposed to happen. Republicans didn't get everything they wanted, but they did get some things on their agenda. Democrats didn't get everything they wanted either, but they got portions of their agenda included as well. The entire process was remarkably low-key. This was followed, in January, by fleshing this bare-bones agreement out into actual spending. Once again, compromise was the word of the day, and the entire process was barely even in the news.

Now we will have a debt ceiling bill which will pass with little public attention and absolutely no grandstanding in the midst of a crisis atmosphere. The third time is indeed pretty charming, because it signifies a real trend away from meaningless posturing and bellowing, and towards Congress working the way it is supposed to.

Factionalism is always a problem for a party in the majority. No matter what the margin of majority is (over the minority party), if you can get a solid group together that is bigger, then you can control what happens to a certain extent. Factions are always thorns in the side of the governing party -- just look at the intra-party feuding from the Blue Dog Democrats for an example from the other side of the aisle. John Boehner and the Establishment Republicans have been in open civil war with their Tea Party brethren for over a year now. But since the folly of the government shutdown, when Boehner allowed the Tea Partiers to steer the ship on their own, Boehner has seemingly had enough. He has laid down the line to the faction: "You can have your moment to scream and yell and threaten, but that moment will only take place within our own caucus until you can get 218 votes behind your position. If you can't do that, then the issue will never reach the House floor, sorry."

Maybe it's a new "rule" -- one which will supercede the "Hastert Rule." Under Hastert, supposedly, no bill would get to the floor without the support of the "majority of the majority." If the Republicans held 250 House seats, then bills would have to get 126 votes within the Republican caucus to even be considered. But maybe, under the new "Boehner Rule," the other edge of this blade will come into play: if Republicans can't get an outright majority of 218 votes within the caucus, then the Tea Partiers will not be allowed to move legislation to the floor. If this is unachievable, then Democrats will be brought into the discussion. Maybe the third time will be the charm, and this will become Boehner's new leadership strategy on other issues as well. One can only hope.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant