About Us
Mission Statement
Rules of Conduct
 
Name:
Pswd:
Remember Me
Register
 

Damned if you Do
Author: BobR    Date: 2014-02-12 11:47:30

It seems like House Speaker John Boehner is over it. He's over being in the middle of the pissing contest between the Tea Party and mainstream Republicans and Democrats and the American public. He's just going to drink bourbon and say "fuck it".

Yesterday, the House shockingly passed a clean debt limit increase that's good until March of next year. The last time this happened without a sweeps week worth of high drama was probably back when Nancy Pelosi wielded the gavel:
The vote was 221-201. Just 28 Republicans including House Speaker John Boehner voted for it, and two Democrats voted against it.

With just 28 Republicans voting for it, you know that John Boehner doesn't care anymore. He commented:
“Mother Theresa is a saint now but if the Congress wanted to make her a saint and attach that to the debt ceiling we probably couldn’t get 218 Republican votes,” joked House Sepaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) at a press conference this week when asked why Republican rank-in-file members were having such a difficult time agreeing to a plan.

I saw on the news last night Boehner singing "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah" as he walked away from a podium after announcing the vote. That, the Mother Theresa joke, and the decision to give most of his party's members in the House his middle finger shows that he's just done with it all.

Maybe Boehner did the math and realized that it would pass if he gave the Dems what they wanted, but wouldn't if he had to rely on his own party:
Votes on the debt limit are even worse for mainstream conservatives because some radicals won’t go along with any vote to raise the debt limit, no matter what it’s paired with. So seeking a House majority without any Democratic votes was a pointless, doomed, strategy; it couldn’t even get off the ground.

If the Republicans somehow manage to maintain control of the House after the election later this year, it seems pretty certain that John Boehner won't be the Speaker anymore, even if he wanted it (and it doesn't seem like he does). It's a thankless task when a bill-killing segment of your own party throws a wrench into any possibility of compromise. Whoever takes his place is certainly going to have an uphill battle.
 

34 comments (Latest Comment: 02/13/2014 02:12:33 by TriSec)
   Perma Link

Share This!

Furl it!
Spurl
NewsVine
Reddit
Technorati