This week, Republican fantasies about Trump and the Democrats came crashing down

On Thursday, Congress once again passed a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open. As has become the standard fare, Republicans fumed at House leadership for not passing individual spending bills, just as they did the last two times the House passed a stopgap spending bill known as a continuing resolution.

Not too long ago, a handful of angry conservatives used a stopgap spending measure as an impetus to kick out then-speaker Kevin McCarthy. But some of those same conservatives demurred when asked whether this week’s developments would be enough to trigger a coup against Speaker Mike Johnson.

“The only people out here talking about that is you guys,” Congressman Bob Good of Virginia, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and one of the eight Republicans who torpedoed Mr McCarthy, toldThe Independent after the vote on Thursday. Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who also voted to kick out Mr McCarthy, said that he was disappointed at the continuing resolution but admitted “people don't think like I do and that's the situation.”

“People don’t think like I do and that’s the situation” could encapsulate the predicament the entire Republican Party faces. For the last few months, we at Inside Washington have said Republicans — all the way down from the squirreliest congress critters to the wealthiest donors to candidates — are engaged in a collective kind of magical thinking. Such wishful thinking has allowed the GOP to behave like they’re living in a world they would prefer, rather than the world as it is.

This week finally shattered that. The House Freedom Caucus attempted to add staunch restrictions to immigration to the continuing resolution to keep the government open, knowing that such a measure would