They are the newest breed of government skeptics, the swelling ranks of Republicans who don’t believe the Obama administration when it says a failure to raise the debt limit will prove catastrophic…

The growing divide is fed by a combustible mix: deep distrust among conservatives of President Barack Obama and government in general and a hardening view among mainstream Republicans that the debt-limit vote offers the best shot in years to fundamentally reorder the country’s finances — and they can’t let it pass them by. The government hit the $14.29 trillion debt limit Monday, but Treasury took steps to keep the country afloat through August…

John Tamny, an economic adviser and editor of RealClearMarkets and Forbes Opinions, wrote a column in May 2010 with the headline “Learn to Love a U.S. Default.” A month later, Bruce Bartlett, a senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House and a Fiscal Times columnist, compiled a list of conservative writings going back 30 years that argue the merits of default. He disputed this notion and predicted a dangerous alliance between this growing strain of conservative thinkers and an emboldened Congress if Republicans gained seats in the midterm elections.

“I believe we could be in for the biggest debt crisis we have seen since Alexander Hamilton was treasury secretary,” Bartlett wrote.