Why is there this impulse to empathize and even feel sorry for John Boehner?
The internet is thick with cruel GIFs of John Boehner crying today after he announced he was resigning as Speaker of the House and quitting Congress. But it’s hard not to have a little sympathy for the guy.
Is that why this guy cries all the time? To arouse sympathy?
Let me tell you something. About the only thing the tea party lunatics are correct about is their assessment that John Boehner has no guts. Otherwise, they’re delusional, and they’ve made delusional demands of Boehner from the start. But Boehner stoked that insanity:
The American people should be forced to watch the “Hell No You Can’t!” speech he gave from the House floor the day the Affordable Care Act passed. After you’ve watched that, ask yourself if he didn’t craft his own political sarcophagus. Ask yourself if this isn’t the most well-deserved political death of a Speaker of the House in our history.
You know, Dan Balz is a pretty dispassionate and objective reporter. I respect him more than probably any other guy of his job description in the capital. And he’s properly alarmed by what it means that John Boehner isn’t radical enough for the modern Republican Party. What we’re supposed to be mourning today isn’t John Boehner’s political career, but the loss of any hope that we’ll ever be able to coexist in any kind of productive and functional way with the Conservative Movement.
Boehner is leaving for the good of his party and presumably out of fatigue at the constant struggle with the rebellious faction in the House. But his departure will hardly resolve the contradictions and divisions that have marked his tenure. A leadership contest will ensue, giving the opportunity for a fresh start in the House. But the new speaker and team will grapple with the same underlying problems — the same irreconcilable issues — that bedeviled Boehner.
Beyond that, no congressional leader can truly take the reins of his or her party nationally. That is reserved for presidential nominees and ultimately presidents. It often has been said that the most successful among them are politicians who define their parties rather than being defined by them.
Who among those now seeking the GOP nomination can do that most effectively — and around what message? The candidate currently at the top of the polls — Trump — promises what the rebellious forces in the GOP most want to hear: that Washington is broken and that only an outsider can fix it. But he offers little in the way of evidence that he can do so.
Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) offers a similar outsider message but with purer conservative convictions than the reality TV star.
Can any of the others in the presidential field — former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), to name just three — tap that anger and unhappiness within the party base and still make a case for conservative governing that includes compromise and cooperation with the Democrats?
Republicans have been on a rightward journey since President George W. Bush left office in 2009, and their leaders have been in hot pursuit.
I think Balz does an excellent job there of describing the landscape, but even he is reluctant to assign blame. The Republican leaders, right now, may be in “hot pursuit” of the rightward lurch of the party base, but when this all started they were in the front waving the standard. They encouraged the heat fever delusions about the president’s birth certificate and his nefarious secret Islamic agenda; they stoked one ridiculous scandal after another and elevated the tragedy in Benghazi to Moby Dick proportions. As shown in the video above, Boehner himself used the most extreme and incendiary language imaginable to distort and dishonor the historic accomplishment of finally providing access to health care for tens of millions of uninsured Americans.
Don’t tell me that this is just politics as usual. I’m forty-six years old and I’ve been politically aware since people were discussing the 1976 presidential election. I’ve never seen nonsense like this before from either party. Not on this level.
Not even close.
And Boehner was the prime beneficiary of this strategy of maximum obstruction and obfuscation…a new experiment in the limits of bad faith.
Then it turned out that this creation of his didn’t want to pay our bills on time. It turned out that they constantly wanted to shut down the government even if it resulted in billions of dollars in economic losses, damaged our nation’s creditworthiness, threw people out of work, and made us look ridiculous on the world stage.
And we’re supposed to feel sorry for him that he couldn’t convince these folks not to do it again over some new heat fever delusion the anti-choicers drummed up with deceitful and selectively edited Planned Parenthood videos?
No.
Fuck John Boehner.
That’s what all decent people should be saying this morning.
He got half of what he deserves.
And we got the bill.
You dismissed me for saying so, but both Balz (who imples it) and Larry Sabato have reached similar conclusions: there is a certain inevitability about Cruz. There is no more arrogant or dis-likable person in American politics, but when politics becomes religion, success may come to those who profess the purest faith.
Trump is already collapsing, and I suspect Carson is not far behind.
If those two are gone, who is there to rally the faithful in Iowa?
Maybe.
Where is this collapse you speak of, however?
I think collapse means you no longer lead in the polls.
Sept 24: Trump 21
Sept 23: Trump 26
Sept 15: Trump 27
Sept 4: Trump 29
Aug 27: Trump 28
Looks like a collapsing balloon to me.
Looks like statistical noise to me.
Polls show him going down, but still leading. The media have stopped attending his every word. That will take him all the down eventually if they continue to ignore him, I’m guessing.
This resignation seems the second leadership scalp Cruz has taken and it directly supports his core ideological argument; he’s a constitutional hobgoblin with more tricks up his sleeve. How many of the Republican leadership who confidently predicted his demise in 2013 are still around? I just can’t decide if he really wants to be president or senate majority leader. I reckon he’s our most treacherous constitutional scholar since Nixon.
Sure nobody can stand his personality or his oleaginous congressional wheedling; but he’s turned Congres on its ear more than once. This is what the ‘base’ wants more than anything. And he’s the only candidate who has taken any useful advantage of the split in the GOP (excluding the opportunistic Trump, who does seem to have peaked) and a case could be made for him having largely incited it himself in the legislature.
I had him figured for a late move against Rand Paul to capture the insurgency then take Jeb to town in Iowa and South Carolina. Not going to happen that way now but Trump is an even bigger act to follow and his ‘last pure conservative standing’ shtick is working; he’s in the hunt. Who else is going to reap Trump’s mole-people? Fiorina? I don’t think so.
He’s been very active in down-ticket races and has money and ground game.
Seriously, we are just one black swan event from him ascending to the nomination, if not the presidency.
Having a President Cruz would mean that the Democratic Party is incompetent. I have a hard time seeing that lunatic getting 270 votes. This current crop of adults are a little more sophisticated and less white than the group that elected Reagan(and less Christian). What blue states can he grab? How does the guy responsible for the shutdown win Virginia? How does he get all the swing states? Everything he’s ever done or said can be picked up with a simple Google search. The Democratic nominee can laugh all the way to the presidency with Cruz as an opponent.
The one big problem with Balz’ piece is in the last sentence quoted above: “Republicans have been on a rightward journey since President George W. Bush left office in 2009, and their leaders have been in hot pursuit.”
In fact, before Bush left office, Republican leaders had already, in a series of secret meetings in December 2008 and January 2009, adopted a strategy of “massive resistance” to anything and everything (including policies many Republicans had previously supported) the newly elected Barack Obama might propose.
They did so because it was, in their view, the quickest way back to political power for themselves and their party. They did so regardless of any negative impacts on the nation and its citizenry. They did so despite the nation being in the grips of the worst economic collapse in 80 years and in the midst of waging two long wars.
#JustTheFacts
It is impossible to emphasize this too much or mention this too often.
On the Inaugural Day of the first African-American President of the United States, at a time when the country was in a historical financial and social crisis, moral criminals who led the Republican Party at a national level met over and expensive dinner and agreed upon their course of action. Absolutely anything the President and the Congressional majorities tried to do would be met with absolute and total resistance and obstruction. Everything, no matter how petty or important.
So, yes, Fuck John Boehner and Mitch McConnell for agreeing to lead the plan agreed upon at that dinner meeting. And Kevin McCarthy, who led the discussion at that meeting along with Representatives Ryan, Cantor, Hensarling, Hoekstra, Pete Sessions and Senators Coburn, Corker, DeMint, Ensign and Kyl. And Newt Gingrich. And Frank Luntz, who organized the dinner meeting and sent out the invitations.
The Parties are not the same.
January 1995. The spectacle of Newt and the Newtlets taking over the House was for me when this brand of uncompromising, not going to place nice with anyone outside our tribe, Republicanism began. Maybe I was the only one that experienced that with such revulsion and dread.
What caused them to slightly retreat was the public response to their shutdown of the government. And that led to them not making further electoral gains in 1996 and 1998. But they were still ready to plow forward and impeach a president for marital infidelity. As a philanderer himself and having been burned over the shutdown, their leader didn’t have a strong enough stomach to go there. So, a cabal of Newtlets and similarly minded Reps staged a coup. Newt was ousted, but the winners lacked an identifiable leader that they could all agree on. Hastert was the least worst compromise. (Boehner was similar eight years later, as McCarthy will be another eight years on.)
But that impeachment worked out well enough for them a year and a half later and the subsequent two election cycles. Wouldn’t wager that it won’t work for them again.
Hastert wasn’t the first choice to replace Gingrich. Livingston was. Then this happened moments before the House voted on the articles of Clinton’s impeachment:
Good times…certainly weird times, anyway.
As to how GOP extremism will work for their electoral prospects in 2016 and beyond, I agree that is not certain. But we can see that the demographics of the Presidential electorate are running away from the GOP, and that the current crop of Republican POTUS candidates are doing absolutely everything they can to cement their growing inability to gain votes from those who are not older white males.
With the craaaaaazy statements and positions the Republican nominee will have on his record when he enters the general election campaign, do you think he will have a good chance?
Livingston was Speaker-elect. Resigned before formally becoming Speaker. Sometimes I leave out details in my comments that I assume are already known to readers here and don’t change the point I’m making.
The 1998 House coup ringleaders were Armey, Delay, Boehner, and Paxon. At some point Armey got cold feet and declined to stand for Speaker. DeLay also passed. Paxon wanted it, but his co-conspirators turned on him. That gave Livingston, one of the strident impeachment Reps, his opening to ascend. Thwarted by old Larry Flynt. Easier to take down corrupt politicians with a zipper problem than those that can keep their pants zipped. A sad commentary on Americans.
Fully agree with your conclusion here.
How do you think the statements and positions of the eventual Republican Presidential nominee will play with the November 2016 electorate?
Haven’t a clue. The national mood is in too much flux to project a year out from now. Of course, there hasn’t been that much difference in the impulses among all the various voting sectors in both parties in the past hundred years if not two hundred years. The regressive/racists v. the progressive/quasi-egalitarians. The extraordinary changes in how the US economy operates is a confounding variable that is difficult for ordinary voters to figure out in real time for their personal future.
Disgruntled Republicans today have yet to perceive how seamless US federal policies have been from 1981-2015. They get that they’re being jerked around, but don’t get that their fealty to racism, sexism (including opposition to contraception and abortion), and militarism is what made and will continue to make them patsies. So, right now half of them are deluding themselves that Trump-Carson-Fiorina is a viable alternative to GOP-more-of-the-same, most of whom aren’t much more viable with the general electorate.
Not many ordinary partisan Democrats even get that they’re being jerked around. Oh, sure, they can see all the charts and graphs that display how income and wealth inequality rose as much or more under Clinton and Obama as it did under Reagan/Bush/Bush, but they rationalize that. And the continuation of a bloated military budget, continuous assaults and loss of access to reproductive freedom, working more hours for less economic stability and security, etc. When the next Clinton is elected she’ll throw off all her won and the DEM party neoliberalcon shackles and become the synthesis of Washington-Lincoln-FDR.
“Oh, sure, they can see all the charts and graphs that display how income and wealth inequality rose as much or more under Clinton and Obama* as it did under Reagan/Bush/Bush…”.
Citations, please, particularly for the “or more” claim under Clinton?
To the point that economic inequality has indeed risen very sharply during the years of the Obama Presidency, can it be seen that the financial crisis which burned up the economy through the beginning of Obama’s first term has been almost entirely responsible for this?
Or, putting it directly to you: which laws and policies supported by Obama and his Administration after they took office in 2009 are responsible for the growth in economic inequality since then?
The major policies our President and Congress were able to jam through the most monolithic Congressional opposition since the Civil War each benefited the lower and middle classes at the expense of the 1%. The ending of the Bush tax cut for incomes over $400K are among those.
“As much” under Clinton and “more” under Obama. If you don’t like the way I write quick comments, then don’t read my comments. Or stop nitpicking my comments.
If I were writing a long article, I’d point out that policies under Clinton were instrumental in driving up income/wealth inequality during the naughts and played a huge role in the financial meltdown. Of course that was aggravated and intensified by the Bush policies.
Bailing out the financial institutions instead of injecting a major portion of those monies into the real economy directly increased income and wealth inequality. We could again return to the Clinton and Bush years when they too failed to direct money into the real economy and instead went for capital gains tax cuts.
Not interested in excuses for why Obama didn’t/couldn’t have passed Keynesian economic policies when he never even freaking proposed such policies.
You made a few points that ring loudly for me. There is much talk about bi partisan compromise and to that end Obama engaged in discussions of a grand bargain and accepted the sequester. There are some issues on which I cannot compromise in conscience. They are issues of hard won victories around the safety net and social justice. And neither should the republicans.
I agree that Obama could have fought harder to alleviate inequality and poverty in this country. I cannot say how much happened under Clinton v Obama. But I know that Clinton killed welfare and drove many to poverty as in the book $2 a Day. — Living on Almost Nothing In America and a recent article in Harper’s. The issues facing us now are military and inequality centered. Who will speak to it other than Sanders, the old man?
The unfortunate part faced by Clinton and Obama is the congress, now occupied by a truly crazy bunch. And just think the next President gets to pick a few Supreme Court justices. Trump or Cruz???
Economic inequality did not grow as much under Clinton as it did under Reagan/Bush/Bush:
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/p2.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Productivity_and_Real_Median_Family_Income
_Growth_1947-2009.png/450px-Productivity_and_Real_Median_Family_Income_Growth_1947-2009.png
There are a number of analyses which come to this conclusion. Middle-class and lower-class incomes grew sharply during the Clinton Presidency.
Yes, Federal regulation and welfare reforms passed during Clinton’s second term with a Republican Congress were part of the cause of increased inequality during the Bush years. But the policies passed by Bush and his Republican Congresses, and the significantly more regressive actions taken by Bush’s Cabinet Departments, and Bush’s horrible Supreme Court nominees, were much more responsible for the rise of inequality and the crash-dive of the economy in ’07-’08.
Prime example: Clinton ran on and successfully raised Federal income taxes on the top income brackets. Bush sharply reduced them.
The ’93-’94 Congress was by far the most progressive one of the Clinton Administration, and Clinton took more progressive actions with his Agencies and Departments during that first Congressional term than he did in subsequent years.
Was Clinton rewarded by the American electorate for his progressive actions during that first Congress?
Was Clinton’s re-election in great doubt?
Would there have been no difference between a President Clinton and a President Dole?
Regarding the Cabinet Agencies, I know you care to write about Clinton’s later and regrettable Treasury Secretaries. One could also compare their choices for Secretaries of their Labor Departments: Robert Reich v. Elaine Chao. Or HUD: Henry Cisneros v. Mel Martinez. Or the Interior: Bruce Babbitt v. Gale Norton. And so forth.
These really got me:
“Bailing out the financial institutions instead of injecting a major portion of those monies into the real economy directly increased income and wealth inequality.“
Holy smokes! Are you aware that ALL the bailouts of financial institutions took place during the Bush Administration? If not, you join a plurality of Americans similarly misinformed by years of propaganda:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-americans-think-obama-not-bush-enacted-bank-bailouts-poll-shows/
“Not interested in excuses for why Obama didn’t/couldn’t have passed Keynesian economic policies when he never even freaking proposed such policies.“
The stimulus passed in February 2009 was Keynesian economics. The dollar amount of that stimulus, and its balance between tax cuts and other expenditures, did not meet your preference or my preference, but it is false to claim that this stimulus was not Keynesian. It quite explicitly was.
But: did Obama need Republican votes to pass that economic stimulus? Were any Republican votes available for the stimulus amount and policy balance he and the House originally wanted, and what the House eventually passed? Here’s reporting from the day the House passed their original Bill:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29obama.html?hp&_r=0
From that day’s reporting: “Democrats’ goal is to have the stimulus package, which is roughly two-thirds new spending and one-third tax cuts, to Mr. Obama’s desk for his signature by Feb. 13, before Congress breaks for Presidents’ Day…The House voted down several Republican proposals, including a substitute package made up entirely of tax cuts for individuals and businesses.”
In order to scrape up the three Republican votes that were necessary to get the stimulus through the Senate (no House Republicans voted for the Bill pre- or post-conference), Senate majority leaders accepted policies slightly less desirable than the House version, while preserving the total dollar amount at nearly identical levels.
Also:
“And the continuation of a bloated military budget,…”
Here in the reality-based community, we have actually seen sharp decreases in our Defense spending:
http://www.cfr.org/defense-budget/trends-us-military-spending/p28855
…continuous assaults and loss of access to reproductive freedom…“.
Again, name the policies supported by Obama, Federal and State Democrats which have been responsible for losses in reproductive freedom.
Your point wrt that link on military spending? Sure looks like it peaked in 2010-2011. And 2013 is back down to where it was in 2007. For those in the real “reality-based community,” appreciate that our military spending based on our population (and ignoring the fact that we haven’t had a real threat since 1945) compared to the rest of the world is wildly disproportionate. And much of that money is spent creating havoc in other countries.
US-trained Syrian rebels in equipment exchange with al-Qaida affiliates . Why? Because ousting Assad in Syria is the USG policy. Why? Who the fuck knows.
Test Pilot Admits the F-35 Can’t Dogfight (F-35 pilot helmets only cost $400,000 each.)
wrt reproductive freedom. Please stop it. Most Democratic politicians, with some notable exceptions, haven’t proposed any policies to roll back reproductive freedom rights in forty years. All the rollbacks just happened all on their own. Well, except for the Hyde Amendment that deprives poor women dependent on Medicaid of having a choice. An amendment that has been renewed several times in the past thirty-nine years regardless of which party controls Congress. It’s one thing to fight for something we’ve never had before (such as suffrage) and it’s a whole other thing to have to fight continuously for what we have and watch it being whittled back to “once had.” Then we have to listen to assholes like Biden announce they “he believes that ‘life’ begins at conception, but he won’t stand in the way of women making their own choice.”
Marie3, military spending has continued to decrease each year since 2013, and is on line to continue to drop under the sequester. The Republican’s unwillingness to negotiate on the budget sequester has been very useful here.
Here’s another way to look at our Defense spending, as a percentage of our National GDP:
http://minutemennews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/defense-spending-as-gdp-2009-with-45-year-averag
e.jpg
Obama has successfully reduced Defense spending for the first time since the first year of the Bush Administration. Does our President get credit for having us on a secure path to sharply reducing Federal Defense spending as a percentage of GDP to a match of its lowest level during the Post-World War II era, reached during the last year of the Clinton Administration?
Look closely at the patterns on the linked chart.
The Parties are not the same. They’re radically different from each other, in fact.
In this way, the Parties have been responsive to their voter bases as well as the vaunted military-industrial complex. You wonder why our Defense spending dwarfs the rest of the world? Americans in the post-WW II era have demanded it, at slightly higher or lower levels. We have not won the political argument with the American people.
Regarding reproductive choice, one Hyde Amendment does not equal a thousand reproductive restrictions passed by Republicans at the State and Federal level, and enabled by State and Federal judges nominated by Republican Governors and Presidents. You and I know that Democrats in States like our California under full Party control have used their majorities to pass and fund increases in reproductive rights, including abortion.
Oh, and what Party was Hyde a member of again?
I’m still not convinced that defense spending has been reduced, if you are only looking at a specific line item. Defense spending has been spread around the budget like a kid spreading out his mashed potatoes to hide them. You may be correct. But do you have it all included? As an afterthought what about Homeland Security?
The Homeland Security Agency has also been subject to the sequester cuts.
The HSA has the strong support of the American people. You and I wish that was not true, but it is. A political Party which proposed eliminating the HSA or cutting its funding substantially below sequester levels would almost certainly be hurt electorally.
“Of course, there hasn’t been that much difference in the impulses among all the various voting sectors in both parties in the past hundred years if not two hundred years.“
Whaaaaaaaaa??
Gee, during those years we’ve seen the fall and rise of major political Parties (neither the Democratic or Republican parties existed 200 years ago), the right of non-property owners to vote, the Civil War and the 14th Amendment, women’s suffrage, the Voting Rights Act/Civil Rights Act and the resultant Southern Strategy and large reformations of supporters for the Republican and Democratic Parties…
Other than these and many other differences, this analysis is spot on.
I said “impulses” and not political parties. (And the Democratic party did exist 200 years ago.) Political parties shift on their policy positions with the winds of time as they seek to win a majority. In the early years of the GOP, the radical Republicans were fierce opponents of slavery. Today’s radical Republicans would repeal the 13th-15th amendments if they could. The radical Republicans of yesteryear are the ancestors of the radical Democrats beginning in the 1930s and not today’s radical Republicans.
This is politics as usual for the Tyler-era Congress. The Southern Radicals have been at this style for a fairly long time. All to the same purpose–the preservation of slavery or its post-Civil War functional equivalent. By Southern Radicals, I mean the guys who would make John C. Calhoun turn red with anger. The guys who would blithely talk about treason at the drop of a hat. The guys who encouraged foreign filibusterers and squatters. The “best government is none at all” criminals who inhabited antebellum elected offices.
So much of the Bush-Obama period of history looks like the period between Jackson and the Civil War – in the four-way fragmentation of politics, in the agressive foreign policy, in the secret agendas, in the Congressional acrimony.
What is different is the number of free agents and loose cannons that independent money can create.
That brings to mind a spoiled child stomping his feet until he gets what he wants no matter how outrageous. Unfortunately, we give in far too often and thereby encourage more of it.
that he could have brought up and passed with democratic congress member support, but didn’t, causing titanic anxiety, suffering and economic loss. I think there is something about Boehner that is kind of like your kindly uncle who drinks too much (not in the Hell No video of course) that people want to believe in.
Great analysis as usual. Time for me to donate again.
Oh, poor, poor son of a bitch — caught the car he’d chased for years and it ran right over him.
I’m more interested in what comes next with the extreme right. Will there be more abortion clinic bombings? More cop shootings of minorities? Will Christianity of a certain brand become enforceable? Do the rich get more tax cuts? Will someone create a nuclear war to bring about the end times?
The road ahead will be littered with death and destruction. How much can be inflicted on people before people abandon the extreme right?
This is a perfect storm for progressive Democrats if the DNC centrists don’t manage to fuck it up. The one thing that is certain is that things will never remain the same but always get better or get worse. With the crazies turned loose in control of both houses of congress I think things will get worse, much worse. Among other things they will shut down the government and the Republicans will get blamed for it. The crazies will still like that but not all Republicans in the general population crazy. They will be disgusted and looking for an alternative. This is one part of the perfect storm.
This biggest reason that Republicans have gained so much power is the disgust of the rest of the population with Democrats. Once the DNC sold out to become corporatists and Republican-lite, far too many people saw politicians as all the same coming to the conclusion of what’s the use of even bothering to vote. We now have a real choice, the first I’ve witnessed in my lifetime, to vote for someone uniting working people who could really make a difference by taking on the powers that are ruining our way of life. Feel the Bern!
Boehner left because the monster he created is out of control. The DNC created its own corporatist monster that is also equally out of control. All people have to do is see it for this to be the perfect storm that results in landslide victory for progressives plus launch a movement for real power to improve all of our lives.
Dan Balz is better than most prominent reporters on the national scene, I agree.
But we read this linked analysis, and the rest of Balz’s recent reporting, and we see that he has failed to tell his readers of the real-life consequences that would come if the House Republicans were successful in stripping Planned Parenthood of its Federal funding.
The Republicans claim over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again that women would not be deprived of health services if they were denied Planned Parenthood services. This is a demonstrable lie, as shown by an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/09/09/3699546/planned-parenthood-study-services/
The CBO also reported that defunding Planned Parenthood would grow other expenditures in Federal social and health programs which would create a net growth in the Federal budget deficit.
All this, in addition to the billions of dollars in economic damage which would come with a government shutdown.
The American public at large does not know these things. Dan Balz and his colleagues in the mass media are to blame for that. We need them to use their megaphones to help stop the racist, Dominionist wing of the conservative movement.
As it is, Balz and his colleagues are enabling the Freedom Caucus with reporting like this, reporting that fails to be honest to the American public.
I don’t feel sorry for Boehner, but I’m worried for the rest of us. What does the GOP do now?
1) They elect another John Boehner who tries the same dance – making symbolic gestures while still getting the bills paid.
This won’t work because the base understands the strategy and is tired of it.
2) The establishment wing of the party gives up on the whacko base and cuts a deal with the Democrats.
In an election year? The party splits in Congress? This probably destroys the chance for any establishment candidate on the national ticket.
3) They elect a tea party crazy as speaker.
Disaster. Give the tea party control of which bills get to the floor? Wouldn’t the Speaker be able to stop a bill raising the debt ceiling just by refusing to bring it to the floor?
It’s kind of fun to mock Boehner and snicker as he is hoisted on his own petard, but “what next?” is not a pleasant question to contemplate.
I still feel sorry for him. Even if it’s his own fault he still had to deal with dangerous maniacs for years and years. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
In a year he’ll be rich as Croesus working for people who poison your water and make inexpensive, life-saving medication unaffordable so they can be even wealthier.
The Amerikan Taliban ascendant.
“Not even close”… Indeed.
I think the only hope for the next speaker and the GOP is to treat the 50 crazies as the virtual third party they are. Strip them of committee leadership and membership on key committees. Drop the requirement that the majority of the majority must support legislation for it to reach the floor. Fuck them and treat them as the albatross they are. Start to actually govern. So what if 29% of the 35% of Americans who still consider themselves Republicans support Trump and general willfully ignorant nonsense. They are dangerous to the GOP and the nation.
A speaker who takes such a position and a GOP presidential candidate who is out front with this type of leadership might easily win… Especially against Hillary.
And it will probably happen that way sooner of later when a third-party emerges or the big end of town flees entirely to the Democrats. But this?
Not in the Republican party I’ve been watching. I imagine people in Wall Street and industry generally whose wealth and freedom from incarceration depend on a compliant, glossy GOP might pray for that, kneeling amidst their treasure, but they probably secretly share my scepticism. GOP candidates are raising the carried interest tax loophole issue on the campaign trail: this is not your parents’ Republican party.
Yes the GOP you’ve seen, yes.
A GOP that can actually govern and win a national election must learn that their “base” is not actually made of wingnuts. A base that forms a viable party (that does more the collect contributions and produce meaningless bills and tweets) must be built on what is actually necessary to win national elections. Pat some point the GOP will go the way of the Whigs unless they jettison the fringe that deserves to be nothing more than a noisy third party.
I’m really glad you dug out that “No you can’t!” speech of Boner’s. You see, I actually saw that speech at the time and it has stayed in my mind ever since. I really hadn’t pay much attention to him before that, it was that speech that revealed to me his character — a cheap, posturing asshole. So yeah, he absolutely did build his own coffin with that speech.