If the Republicans lose the House, I don’t think there is any question that John Boehner will go down in history as the most inept Speaker in the history of the country. He’s so bad, in fact, that he should lose his gavel even if the Republicans retain control of the House. On some level it would be difficult for anyone to govern in these circumstances. He has a caucus that thinks they’re in office to carry out a revolution, but they’re really there to fund the government and make its agencies work better. If they had some help from the Senate and a friendly president, they could make some significant structural reforms, but, as it stands, all they can do is ruin our country’s credit rating and make themselves look ineffectual and foolish. So, I can sympathize with Boehner to a certain degree. But he isn’t just struggling to get things done. He’s totally failing. He holds closed-door meetings with his caucus where he implores them to come to their senses. And they simply refuse. A more self-confident Speaker would go cut deals with the Democrats and the president until his rowdy fringe base learned their lesson. But Boehner always caves when the cavemen grunt. So, now he’s going to pass the Senate’s version of the surface transportation bill because he could not find a way to get a bunch of right-wingers to support his own awful version of the bill. He’s reduced to rubber-stamping Harry Reid’s work because his own caucus doesn’t care about him or his needs or his begging and pleading.
Never has a house of Congress been more deserving of defeat. Who could have predicted?
