I think Brian Beutler makes important and fair points when he argues that John Boehner isn’t much different from the nut-jobs he just picked a fight with, but I’m not sure that Beutler has sufficiently considered the ramifications of the battle that will result. I think, for example, that Boehner’s decision to ream out the Heritage Foundation and the Tea Party was not unrelated to Harry Reid’s decision to change the filibuster rules. In both cases, a congressional leader had seen enough dysfunction and took a dramatic step to marginalize the obstructionists.
It was striking that Boehner admitted that the recent government shutdown wasn’t his idea and was never a plan he agreed with. No similar admission has come from Mitch McConnell, whose relentless obstruction led to a revision of the Senate rules. But it hardly matters which party is responsible for fixing the problem, so long as it is the lunatics who are sidelined.
Now, it might seem that there is less disagreement between Boehner and the Jim DeMint contingent than meets the eye, but things are not static. As Beutler notes, Erick Erickson of Red State has responded to Boehner by saying that “he is done as speaker.” Glenn Beck just said that Boehner is a “worthless, worthless Republican” who “ha[s] to go” and called Mitch McConnell “the biggest two-faced liar I’ve ever seen.” Rush Limbaugh complained, “it just seems like the Republican Party is absorbed, is consumed with eliminating any conservative influence inside the party whatsoever.” Dan Holler of Heritage Action, said that Boehner’s message to conservatives was “We use you guys to get elected.”
Whether it was his intent or not, the fight that Boehner started sucked in McConnell, as well. The radicals didn’t even notice that McConnell voted against the budget because they seem to understand that McConnell is just pandering to them. They see McConnell as indistinguishable from Boehner because he, too, has been blasting outside conservative groups recently.
This development cannot help but lead to changed dynamics in how the Republican Party and their messaging machine function. I believe it is the beginning of a slow process whereby the Republican Establishment comes somewhat to terms with the fact that the business community is fed-up with their refusal to accept that fact that Barack Obama is our president and will remain so for another three years.
Letting the president staff the courts and his administration, and ending the crisis budgeting strategy are two parts of the same thing.
The Republicans went insane. And now we all have to manage the consequences.
Or to put it another way, two high PermaGov functionaries are cooperating in the ongoing fix by allying with one another in the center in order to control the anti-fix extremists. Boehner and Reid…and everyone else complicit in this grand PermaFix…think that they are sane and everyone else is crazy. If some fairly high intelligence from another galaxy landed here and looked at what is going on in the world today, it might indeed agree, at least on a practical level.
You are right, Booman. The only choice left is between chaos and lying to the sheeple. Perhaps a miracle will happen, but that’s the only “Third Way” I can see out of this mess. The rest is just more of the same.
PermaFix redux.
Nice.
Grind on.
Later…
AG
Yup, and as a result a budget that would have been derided as unfathomably draconian 3 years ago is now passing. Even Boehner is done, before he goes he seems determined to advance conservative in the most efficient way possible–working with Obama.
Apparently, Beck, Limbaugh, etc. missed the count on the budget vote. The marginalization has officially begun.
If McConnell gets sucked into this infighting how does he survive his primary challenge?
But that’s exactly why he did get sucked into it. The primary challenge means that he cannot afford to be “not conservative enough”.
Good they are breaking… now let’s get that grand bargain we were promised and was the reason we voted in 2008 and 2012. Followed by Clinton while the right is down and another grand bargain.
Now is our chance.
Nope.
As I’ve watched Boehner I’ve had the feeling he would have been an old-fashioned Republican if the Tea Party hadn’t been the media darling and effective at primarying. I think he would have cooperated in the same way they used to if he could have.
That said, I don’t trust him and think what has happened is that the money that is powering the establishment GOP can see the writing on the wall about Midterms. They can see the GOP has pissed off about every demographic possible except old white men. And they can see those guys don’t have the votes to keep the party going anymore.
So what happened to the Koch Bros who were funding the Tea Party? Are they playing both sides? We are at the point where the GOP is selling US assets. There is pressure to sell USPS to private companies. Prisons have gone private disastrously. Maybe the Koch Bros are just seeing there is more money in backing establishment types since they’ve lowered the bar on cooperation so far down that they are getting what they want.
I see this as a ploy for the GOP to appear “reasonable.” I would rather see the Tea Party in control and making asses of themselves so they would get trounced in the midterms. I live in Indiana and I hear people who have absolutely no idea how congress works. They believe what they hear on the news. Whatever the GOPer says they believe. Romney was believed in his debates. Our Gov Pence was a recent and celebrated speaker at some ALEC gathering. So they will believe the GOP is reasonable. Boehner now becomes “strong” and a darling of the GOP.
I wish this was a return to GOP sanity. I really do, but crazy people don’t return to sanity without therapy or confinement.
There is no way I want corporations in charge and that’s what would happen with Libertarians or the GOP.
There is so much good that is happening with the Obama administration and Democrats and it is lost in the noise the GOP creates day after day.
Sorry. I’m just really pissed at the GOP and every idiot who votes for them. Rant over.
It means what it appears to mean. It’s not a ploy, it’s more like a purge. The only thing to remember is that the anti-Tea Party Republicans, who you might be tempted think of as “good guys”, are the same sons of bitches they always were. Boner, Karl Rove, are not about to become Democrats. It’s just that this whole Tea Party shtick that’s been going on the last four years has outlived its usefulness.
As soon as the GOP establishment came out in the open about how pissed off they were at Ted Cruz and the rest of the Tea Party for being perfectly happy to let the US default on its debts, the minute they started talking openly about how they had to do something about it, I was just waiting to see this play out.
With the Kochs and Birchers and Tea Party so powerful in the GOP, the only question was whether they could be brought under control. The establishment seemed to be afraid of them. Personally, I figured they could do it if they wanted to, because as much money as the TP forces have, and no matter how loyal their following, the GOP represents the Masters of the Universe, and I figured if they would just get off their asses they could crush these Bozos in no time.
Two months ago, it was hard to imagine Boner saying any of the things he’s just been saying. If you could see the signals his friend Steve LaTourette was sending, you could read between the lines: Boner really is a traditional Republican not a Tea Partier.
Look, this item appeared only six weeks ago:
http://www.ohiodailyblog.com/content/steve-latourettes-hopeless-job-promoting-republican-quotmoderat
esquot
Yet even in the last crisis, where Boner had to allow his caucus to break ranks and vote with Democrats, he came out smelling like roses (or should I say “Four Roses”?)
Yet if Boner really was NOT TP, and if the establishment really had decided to stop letting them running the party (into the ground), and if they could do it, then obviously Boner would have to end this charade. I knew that the moment he did that, it would be like the proverbial Fat Lady singing.
So the Fat Lady just sang. The only reason McConnell didn’t go along with it is because he is being primaried from the right.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/12/12/john-boehner-unchained-why-the-house-speaker-finally-
stood-up-to-the-far-right
My impression of Boehner is that he’s an establishment figure of the “old” GOP: perfectly willing to maintain the status quo of Big Business/Moneyed interests while giving just enough lip service to the
TeabaggersRepublican conservative base for electoral purposes.However, I’m not sure he cares that much anymore; frankly, he looks exhausted. At 64 years old, Boehner’s spent 5 years in the Ohio state legislature, followed by 23 in the US House. He may or may not give a fuck about his status as Speaker, as he apparently drinks a lot (possibly related to his crying) and has been accused by both conservatives, centrists and liberals of being a useless House leader, I would surmise he is not a happy man.
Seems to me he would do better as a lobbyist; although rich, Boehner’s net worth is “only” $2-5 million, placing him at #85 in the US House. He’s always been corrupt, but at least as a lobbyist he wouldn’t have to maintain an ethical conflict.
That goes a long way towards explaining why both parties don’t see a big deal in playing with people’s pensions and Social Security. To them it’s just chump change, so why be angry about something so minor?
Boner was tired years ago. He would have much rather played golf with Obama. But he kept up the same old shtick right until about now.
He just stopped. Not because he’s tired, but because he got the okay from the top.
But is it believable that the recent government shutdown wasn’t Boehner’s idea (maybe) and was never a plan he agreed with (got a bone to pick with this one)? Because I remember quite well that Boehner was mewling for weeks that he didn’t have the votes in the House to avert the shutdown, even though poll after poll showed House Democrats practically unanimous against the shutdown and many House Republicans quite skittish about the possibility.
But it didn’t matter what any particular House member wanted or thought about the shutdown, the Speaker wasn’t going to bring a bill to the floor for a vote. Boehner had, attentive readers will recall, brought a measure to a floor vote before and been roundly humiliated when it didn’t pass (fiscal cliff vote at the end of 2012).
When he said he didn’t have the votes on the shutdown, Boehner never qualified it by saying whether that meant a violation of the so-called Hastert Rule, meaning that he needed the support of a majority of the Republican Caucus. When the shutdown was finally ended in October, the vote was 285-144, one flipped vote short of a veto-proof supermajority. Is Boehner that bad at counting? I don’t think so.
No, I think the shutdown happened and continued for as long as it did in part because of Boehner’s cooperation and connivance. If he truly didn’t agree with the shutdown, he sure pursued a funny strategy. It looks like he now wants to have it both ways, and distance himself from what has turned out to be (and that he was warned all along it would be) a disastrous political maneuver. As long as he’s flailing, let’s get together and toss him an anchor.
Glenn Beck most certainly will vote for those RINOs. He’s engaging in political theater as much as Boehner is.
I would feel sorry for them, if the self-righteous, selfish bastards didn’t deserve it.
Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog sees this as mere brand differentiation; a strategy to increase the party’s market share rather than a schism that will damage the GOP:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2013/12/you-see-gop-civil-war.html#links
I understand the concept.
It’s just like after Bush Jr. Republicans “have stopped running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms”. (HT to Driftglass).
Notice the uptick in Independents who voted for McBomb in 2008.
They can try to change their brand image, or proliferate their disgusting ideology into a bunch of different brands.
It won’t change the fact that their ideology is disgusting, and that they’re dying off, slowly but surely.
The goal of any liberal, progressive, democrat, etc, is to marginalize the Republican party as much as possible as soon as possible. The sooner we can do that, the sooner we can rejoin the rest of the civilized world.