Quotes like this don’t come along every day:
“I prefer to be in the arena voting than trying to placate a small group of phony conservative members who have no credible policy proposals and no political strategy to stop Obama’s lawlessness,” said Rep. Devin Nunes, a close ally of the speaker. “While conservative leaders are trying to move the ball up the field, these other members sit in exotic places like basements of Mexican restaurants and upper levels of House office buildings, seemingly unaware that they can’t advance conservatism by playing fantasy football with their voting cards.”
I kind of love that quote. At first glance, it has the flavor of sanity about it until you realize that he’s arguing about who are the real conservatives and declaring that the president is lawless.
Because you can be rock-ribbed or moderate, frothing mad or seemingly reasonable, but the two things you are not permitted to contradict are the Tea Party delusions about the president’s perfidy and the supremacy of conservatism.
There will be no coup against Boehner. Not a successful one, anyway. But Boehner will continue to let the rock-ribbed Tea Party conservatives run the show and steer him into shoal after shoal. So, really, what difference does it make whether Boehner is speaker or not?
Whenever he tries to do anything even modestly sane, he fails.
