I’ll give Dana Milbank partial credit for taking John Boehner to task over his intention to revive the crisis over the debt ceiling and create another avoidable fiasco that needlessly harms the economy. I don’t understand, however, why Milbank can’t see what is staring him straight in the face:
As I watched [Boehner] defend his position in the House TV studio Thursday morning, I had an uncomfortable thought: Does Boehner want the economy to tank?
My instinct says that he does not, that his concern for Americans’ suffering trumps his party’s interests.
Dana, you have terrible instincts.
I think your mistake may be that you are looking at this as a matter of what John Boehner wants. But the Speaker is not in control of his caucus. He could have tried to exert control over them at some point, and he might have succeeded. But he’s been too afraid of a coup to take the chance. Remember when he tried to negotiate a grand bargain with the president and then discovered that he didn’t have that authority?
He knows that his caucus won’t let him approve a hike in the debt ceiling without a second round of brinksmanship. He doesn’t feel like he has a choice in the matter. He’s not pulling the strings here. He’s like an orange muppet.
The second Debt Ceiling Fiasco isn’t going to happen because the Speaker is a cynic who wants to tank the economy. It’s going to happen because the Speaker is weak and ineffectual and he likes his job more than he cares about other people being out of work. The Second Fiasco is going to happen because his caucus is functionally insane.
