The people’s house is in disarray. In the wake of John Boehner’s bombshell announcement that he wants to hand over the Speaker’s gavel by the end of the month, followed by his right-hand man and presumed successor Kevin McCarthy’s even bigger bombshell announcement that he was withdrawing from the race, the governing Republican caucus is in the midst of an existential leadership crisis.

It’s a narrative we’re all familiar with at this point: a battle between establishment leaders interested in running the government and activist backbenchers hell-bent on derailing it. But unlike previous installments of this drama (think 2011’s debt-ceiling fight or 2013’s government shutdown showdown), this time there’s no obvious end game. No one, not even Boehner himself, knows what’s going to happen. The only thing we know for sure is that the current status quo can’t possibly go on much longer. Abraham Lincoln’s warning about a house divided against itself, delivered in far more dire times in American politics, rings true on today’s House floor.

The only candidate who could theoretically win support from both camps, Paul Ryan, doesn’t want the job. Others contenders can’t muster enough votes. In the face of intransigence from the Freedom Caucus, a coalition of the 40 most militantly conservative members, some have even speculated that Republicans may resort to Democratic votes. Where is Frank Underwood when you need him?

Coupling the speakership race with the witch hunt that is the Select Committee on Benghazi, most pundits see the House GOP approaching the nadir of its five chaotic years in power. But there is an important silver lining in the chaos, one that isn’t getting enough play in the punditry.

The current showdown is the logical conclusion of years of reactionary governance from a caucus led by a radical fringe. In other words, this crisis is nothing new. What is new is that mainstream, establishment conservatives are finally waking up to reality of what happens when you let a fringe caucus run your party into the ground. And now, finally, it looks like they are willing to do something about it.

This could be the long-awaited watershed moment when the GOP swings back to the center from its radical anti-Obama right-wing experiment. It may be bad news for Democrats, who rode the wave of Republican extremism to one presidential election win and may be on the cusp of winning another, but it’s good news for the country. If serious moderate conservatives, the historical backbone of the Republican Party, can somehow manage to beat out the radical fringe in the speakership fight, they may finally be able to rebuild and rebrand their party.

In a column last week, David Brooks decried the slow degradation of his Republican Party. A conservative whose political heroes are traditionalist Edmund Burke and federalist Alexander Hamilton, Brooks sees in the contemporary GOP a frivolous project in “revolution” with its head so far up its own rear-end it can’t see the light of day. He blames Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and other purist crusaders for dragging the party to the comedically anti-government radical right.

Brooks views the contemporary GOP as the result of a radical “movement conservative” project with roots as far back as the Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich “revolutions.” But Brooks and the moderate GOP establishment are at least five years late in their indictment of the GOP’s radical turn rightward. They sat idly by while the Tea Party rabble-roused its way to victory in the 2010 midterms and when the birther movement came to the forefront in 2011 (we really should have seen the Trump candidacy coming). Only now, backed into one corner by the House Freedom Caucus and another by the Trump phenomenon, is the establishment finally mobilizing against its tumorous radical wing.

But if the moderate, governing establishment can somehow break through the Freedom Caucus blockade, it would be a game changer. We could see a completely different GOP in 2016, one that could give Hillary Clinton a run for her money. The party could finally resurrect the kind of conservatism that stands for prudence, reason, tradition and balance — the kind that wins presidential elections and governs seriously and responsibly. America desperately needs this kind of conservatism so it can trade in its current model of paralyzed hyper-partisanship for a system that actually passes legislation and gets things done.

There’s a real opportunity for breakthrough in this latest House crisis, and if serious moderate conservatives can somehow gain the upper hand, the party and the country will be all the better for it.

William Kirkland is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].

The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.