The Republican Party’s war on itself has turned its inoperative House majority into a “clown show” and a “dysfunction caucus” and is handing wins to the Chinese Communist Party – and that’s just what some of its own members say about it.

Days of recriminations between far-right hardliners, moderates, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his nihilistic tormentors reached a new peak on Tuesday in extraordinary scenes of inter-party infighting on the south side of the US Capitol.

The legislative train wreck made clear that more is now at stake than McCarthy’s loosening grip on a job he craved for years and the capacity of the GOP to fulfill the chamber’s most basic function – setting a budget to run the country.

The Republican majority’s farcical self-harm now increasingly appears to be putting America on a path hurtling toward a government shutdown ahead of a deadline for new federal funding at the end of next week. This could mean furloughs for federal workers who provide basic services, that troops could go unpaid and the possibility of severe damage to an economy that can’t afford more knocks if the impasse is prolonged.