I don’t know what happened to this Republican’s brain, but I hope it isn’t something that happens to you:
Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) — a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, which had been the epicenter of many of Boehner’s problems — suggested that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may need to be the next GOP leader on the chopping block, particularly for his unwillingness to get rid of the Senate filibuster.
“We made a lot of promises to the American people, that if we took the Senate, that we would do certain things and those things have not been accomplished,” Salmon said in an interview with reporters. “A lot of the problems we are engaged in is because the Senate doesn’t take any action on anything and there’s nothing that any presidential candidate on our side says that will ever be realized as long as the modern-day filibuster is enacted in the way it is today.”
Even if there were no filibuster in the Senate, there would still be a presidential veto. While it’s true that the Republicans might get slightly more mileage out of their unhinged agenda if they could force the president to use his veto pen on must-pass legislation, the things that Republicans really seem to care about would not have been accomplished and will not be accomplished even without the Senate rules.
The president would still have gotten his deal with Iran, and he’ll never consent to defund Planned Parenthood or to rip up the Affordable Care Act.
At least there a few House Republicans who have an actual grasp on reality:
“To be perfectly honest with you, the results we get are probably going to be the same thing, it’s just going to be a different face,” Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) told reporters. “The natives are restless, and they want to see something change. So how much change somebody can bring about, we’ll see.”
…”We are going to have Obama as President, we are going to have Pelosi and Reid as minority leaders, and we have McConnell who continues to fail to lift the filibuster, so we’re not going to get our agenda done as it comes out of the House,” Rep. Bill Flores (R TX) told reporters Friday. “And you’re going to have a new Speaker, who is going to have to wonder if he or she is the next person to lose their head.”
Yeah, this Flores dude couldn’t help taking a shot at McConnell and the filibuster either, but he said this more as a reflection of the true situation than as some kind of belief in ponies and the secret powers of some hypothetical alternative Speaker of the House.
So, what’s going to change?
Well, the new Speaker won’t take the gavel until November, presumably after some of the more nettlesome problems facing Congress have been settled. That’s the idea, anyway, although we’ll have to see if that actually works out that way it is supposed to. You know, we’ve got to get some transportation money appropriated and lift the debt ceiling and there’s some business to be decided with the Export-Import Bank. Yeah, and an omnibus spending bill to keep the government open has to get done. So, I’m a little skeptical that will all happen before Halloween.
But, assuming it does, the next Speaker will simply be under more pressure not to do any of this next year in a sane, compromising, and timely manner. And, since the chances are that the next Speaker will still be in charge of the House in January 2017 when Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders is sworn in, we can expect more and worse of what we’ve been getting with Boehner.
The Conservative Movement will not reconcile itself to modern America and we can’t seem to sideline them.
So, the nightmare will continue and get worse.
