Speakers historically have had a lot of influence over their caucus. Take for example how often Pelosi passed legislation with exactly the number of Dem votes needed. That’s obviously not a coincidence, it’s because the Dem leadership pushed for more votes till they had enough and then stopped.
Boehner has more or less lost this power. If he wants to pass something meaningful, he usually has to use Dem votes to do it. And even on symbolic votes like this one, he can’t rely on his party.
As I said, I think this has more to do with the changing nature of the GOP then Boehner, but its pretty clear that past Speakers have held power that Boehner has lost.
You have quite a loose definition of “working just fine”. You have a faction in one party that was quite nearly able to force the US to default on its debt and did force the government to shut down temporarily. They can’t pass a transportation bill and had a devil of a time lifting a finger to relieve the VA hospital crisis. They voted over three dozen times to kill the ACA, then vote to sue Obama for not implementing it fast enough. We have dozens of embassies with no ambassadors and federal benches without judges. It isn’t so much a question of refusing to pass laws, it’s more a matter of refusal to do any part of their job.
Boehner is complaining that Obama isn’t acting unilaterally to fix the border without input from congress?
“In the absence of legislation, Republicans urged President Obama to act on his own to secure the borders and safely deport illegal immigrant children.”
So they said this the same week they voted to sue Obama for bypassing congress?
More people voted for Democrats than Republicans (and will probably do so again), but due to the district lines we still end up with a majority Republican.
I don’t blame Boehner as much as the idiots he has to lead. He’s not as extreme as many of his fellow GOPers, but has to act that way to maintain leadership. He’s gotten a couple things done when it absolutely, positively has to be done, like ending the debacle on the government shutdown, but doesn’t have the power to act on much more than that. However, I would like to see the elimination of the Hastert rule and just put Democratic bills up that would probably pass with a majority of Democrats and a couple Republicans.
I don’t think this reflects poorly on Boehner. Nobody could keep the collection of idiots the GOP has sent to Congress in line, and we certainly can’t hold him responsible for Cruz (considering the latter is in a different body.)
IMO, Boehner is playing one of the most impressive games of Rope-a-Dope with his caucus I’ve ever seen. I mean the caucus is ungovernable because they are basically two separate parties with two separate aims, and one of those parties basically wants to do absolutely nothing. And yet, Boehner keeps losing his caucus, taking jabs left and right, and still remains Speaker. I have no idea how he does it. Any other politician would have been dethroned as Speaker at least 5 times by now.
Even more would pass with a minority of Republicans and a few Democrats.
This is what makes him a bad Speaker IMHO. He has handcuffed himself to a stupid rule put in place by a prior Speaker. The “Hastert Rule” is not codified or enshrined in any official procedure and it can/should be dumped.
Unfortunately, he’s afraid that if he does that he’ll lose his job and that means more to him than governing the country competently.