Boehner signals defeat…
…of the Republican party. Or, at least, that’s what it’s beginning to look like.
His leadership was marked by endless votes against Obamacare, even as the program became a national success. The 2013 shutdown of government, engineered by conservative Republicans, was a low point in what seems to have become an increasingly impossible job.
The latest challenge — a threatened government shutdown over demands by conservatives that Planned Parenthood be defunded — is exactly the kind of absurd and dangerous move that the right wing has made its signature tactic. It appears that Mr. Boehner, like most of the nation, finally decided he had had enough. …NYT EditorialBoard
It’s hard to even imagine that Republicans don’t know how much trouble their party is in with the voters. Polls show that they are blamed for government slowdowns and shutdowns. Ol’ Bonzo’s “government is the problem” just doesn’t work anymore.
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“A good political leader is one who, with the interests of all in mind, seizes the moment in a spirit of openness and pragmatism,” the pontiff said.
This is the kind of leader Boehner, who I’ve followed since I first covered Congress 20 years ago, aspired to be. This is the kind of leader Boehner was on a good day. But for most of his speakership, he could not be that leader, because his caucus constantly tugged him toward extremism and implacability. He kept his title, but he lost any ability to lead. Finally, he had enough. …DanaMilbank,WaPo
I think Milbank is being far too kind to Boehner.
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The split deepens within Republican party. The tea partyers are taking some serious hits.
GOP lawmakers who’ve stood by Boehner’s side throughout his rocky five-year tenure as Speaker bitterly blamed the right flank for forcing a contested leadership race less than a year after the party won control of Congress in the 2014 midterm elections.
A fired-up House Ethics Committee Chairman Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), speaking not long after Boehner dropped the bombshell at a Friday conference meeting that he’ll leave Congress at the end of next month, ripped into hard-line conservatives.
He accused them of opposing Boehner at every turn, and noted they have “never had a horse of their own.”
“Any jackass can kick down a barn door. It takes a carpenter to hang one. We need a few more carpenters around here. Everybody knows it,” Dent said. …TheHill
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Was Boehner incompetent or just beleaguered?
Even Boehner’s most stalwart allies would have trouble arguing that his tenure was anything other than a failure. But the question is, how much of it was Boehner’s fault? Was he in an impossible situation from which no speaker could have wrung much success, or was he just terrible at his job?
Pretty much both, says Paul Waldman at the Washington Post.
Granted, when your party doesn’t hold the White House, you aren’t going to be passing significant legislation to accomplish your own objectives. But you still might work with the other party to get some things done. That has happened in the past — legislative leaders have worked with a president of the other party to do big things like tax reform. But not anymore.
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Uh oh! The far right may think it’s great to be rid of Boehner, but some are more than worried…
Boehner’s long tenure in the House made him an accomplished operator who knew the chamber’s ins and outs and had ties across the aisle. Whoever succeeds him is likely to have less experience in those ways. And he (or maybe she, but probably he) will have to deal with the same factions, and still have to either disappoint conservatives or else plunge the chamber into total chaos and likely shutdown. (There’s a reason Kevin McCarthy, the majority leader and early favorite to succeed Boehner, hasn’t been agitating for his ouster.)
Democratic leaders seem to see this already. Republican leaders may see it but recognize the political winds won’t reward for pointing it out. As for conservative activists and lawmakers, they may soon discover that Boehner wasn’t the problem, but that removing him only made it worse. …TheAtlantic