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 that 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.”
