In retrospect, we should have seen it coming. No, not just yet another challenge to John Boehner’s always wavering authority as House Majority Leader, this one another threatened government shutdown over Planned Parenthood funding, but his anguished demeanor amidst the smiles and jubilation during the triumphant visit this week of Pope Francis to Washington.
Boehner has long seemed like a dead man walking, and perhaps that is literally true because of some undisclosed physical malady. I wish him no ill and hope not. But perhaps something happened during Boehner’s private audience with the Pope — looking His Holiness in the eye can do that — and he decided it was time to cave in to the party’s lunatic fringe, which has been trying to engineer his ouster for some time because he actually tried to help govern, not play the fringe’s despicably destructive games. And so Boehner will resign from the most abysmal speakership in memory and Congress at the end of October, his humiliation complete.
The 65-year-old speaker, who frequently invoked his working-class Catholic roots in Reading, Ohio, had invited popes to address Congress for the last 20 years, but Francis was the first to accept. The pope’s visit was especially problematic for this poster boy for a party that self-righteously jams God (well, that white Christian god, anyway) into just about everything it says and does, but partisan differences had been put aside during the pontiff’s Capitol Hill stopover.
Boehner was elected Speaker in 2011 and had planned to leave Congress at the end of 2014, but returned because of the unexpected defeat of Eric Cantor.
“My first job as speaker is to protect the institution,” Boehner said at a news conference at the Capitol, adding, “It had become clear to me that this prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable harm to the institution.
“This morning I woke up, said my prayers, as I always do, and thought ‘this is the day I am going to do this.'”
Boehner always seemed to be riding an emotional roller coaster and seemed able to cry on cue, which he did during the pope’s address to a joint session of Congress, so it was no surprise that he was teary eyed as he exited a closed-door meeting with Republicans where he had announced his departure.
Never able to control the monster he helped create, let alone work with President Obama on anything, Boehner’s resignation is the figurative last nail in the coffin of Republican claims that they were better at governing and, with a right-wing wind at their back, would do exactly that after mid-term election victories in 2014.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, speaking on the Senate floor, lauded Boehner, but blamed his departure on the state of the Republican Party.
“By ousting a good man like Speaker Boehner — someone who understood the art of compromise — the party of Eisenhower and Reagan is no more,” he said.
Obama declined to speculate about Boehner’s succesor, but he warned that the next speaker should not be someone willing to shut the government down if policy demands were not met.
“You don’t invite a potential financial crisis,” Obama said. “You build roads, pass transportation bills. You do the basic work of governance. There’s no weakness in that. That’s what government is in our democracy.”
Across town, a group of social conservatives were gathered for the start of the annual Values Voter Summit. Senator Marco Rubio delivered the news of Boehner’s resignation to the summit to huge cheers and a standing ovation, underscoring the opposition Boehner often faced from within his own ranks.
Senator Ted Cruz skipped the pleasantries, as is his classless wont, and lashed out at Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for making promises to conservatives and not keeping them.
“I have long said leadership decisions are decisions to be made by the House, but I have also long called on Republican leadership to do something unusual, which is lead,” Cruz disingenuously said. “To actually stand up and honor the commitments that we made to the American people. There’s a frustration across this country. It is volcanic. And it’s not complicated to understand.”
Cruz, of course, will be shocked — just shocked — when that right-wing frustration translates into another crushing Republican loss in the 2016 presidential election when more moderate voters have their say.