I’m not really sure why John Boehner didn’t announce his resignation tonight. Honestly, I don’t understand. He doesn’t have any control of his caucus and that means that he has no business presuming to be their leader. He had a stupid plan which, as best as I can understand it, had no other purpose than trying to demonstrate that the Republicans weren’t trying to protect millionaires from tax cuts hikes. Why that was so important is unclear. The Plan B bill still contained generous tax cuts for millionaires and tax hikes for the middle class, so it wasn’t even an honest effort. And the Speaker wound up demonstrating the opposite of what he intended when his caucus refused to faux-raise taxes on millionaires.
The president has no incentive to bargain with Boehner anymore. Why make concessions to someone who can’t deliver on his promises? The administration has now been through this process twice with Boehner. If they are going to cut a deal now, it is going to have to be on Nancy Pelosi’s terms and designed to win with only a sliver of Republican votes. That would cost Boehner his speakership.
The only alternative to that is for Boehner to give up and let us go over the cliff and hope the caucus reelects him as Speaker again in the first week of January. However, I don’t see why he would be reelected as their leader since they refuse to follow his lead.
All I know is that any military leader who faced a mutiny of this magnitude would either resign his post or start employing courts-martial on a massive scale.
There is no recovering from this humiliation. Speaker Boehner might need a night or two to realize it, but his command is over. If he has any honor, he’ll do the right thing.