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Is this the end for John Boehner?
Kevin Drum almost feels sorry for the guy. Even Israel has turned against Boehner, thanks to Boehner’s nutty, politically suicidal, unilateral invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu.
And now even Netanyahu is turning on him with a statement from Israel’s foreign minister that Boehner had more or less lied to the Prime Minister about the extent of partisanship in the original invitation to address Congress.
Netanyahu, Drum writes, has effectively thrown Boehner under the bus.
… Finally, it looked like he’d pulled something off. He announced the Netanyahu speech two weeks ago, catching the president off guard and garnering huzzahs from every corner of the the conservative movement. Finally, a victory!
But now it’s all turned to ashes. His big spectacle is in tatters, with Democrats in open revolt and pundits of all stripes agreeing that he overreached by going around the White House on a foreign policy matter. It’s been nothing but a headache, and even Netanyahu has joined the lynch mob now. What’s worse, there’s nothing he can do. The speech is still four weeks away, and Boehner has no choice but to let the whole dreary debacle play out. He already knows his show is a flop, but the curtain has to come up anyway and Boehner has to keep a stiff upper lip the whole time. …Drum,MoJo
Bummer! No way out of this for Boehner. Aw gee.
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Greg Sargent shows precisely how the current Republican kerfuffle over funding Homeland Security could do more damage to John Boehner.
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And from The Hill, the sound of the coffin lid dropping:
Speculation is mounting over whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress next month — a high-profile address that could boost him in the polls two weeks before he faces voters back home.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the March 3 speech is moving ahead as planned and that he has no regrets inviting Netanyahu to address Congress without first running it by the White House.
But Boehner’s bold move has sparked a political and diplomatic firestorm, and rocked the tense and often-complicated relationship between Washington and Jerusalem.
Vice President Biden’s office dropped a bombshell on Friday, saying he won’t attend the Netanyahu address due to a previously scheduled trip abroad. And three senior House Democrats — Congressional Black Caucus Chairman G.K. Butterfield (N.C.) and Reps. John Lewis (Ga.) and Earl Blumenauer (Ore.) — said they also will skip Bibi’s address because it breached diplomatic protocol.