Well, in less than a day, we went from little hope of avoiding a government shutdown to a deal to keep the government open.
I’m sure you’ll say that doesn’t mean anything, but it is a piece of evidence that supports the notion that he had more clout with his own extremists on Friday than he did on Thursday.
Or it means he’s finally shutting them off and working something out with the sane majority, to kick the can a little farther. No doubt you’ll find some way to call me wrong, of course; some way to claim that another Continuing Resolution with no chance of a budget is a sign of leadership. I actually look forward to your thoughts on the matter.
No more chance of a Grand Bargain now
Ethics Committee Chair Charlie Dent:
You can blame the party’s nihilist wing all you want, but Boehner’s choice to pander to them instead of getting them under control is not a sign of strong, or even adequate, leadership.
Yeah…
Pandering to them is what he’s not doing, now. We’re talking about now.
Well, that’s the whole point: he’s either making a deal with the sane majority (i.e. the Dems plus a few dozen relatively sane Pubbies), or making a deal with the Wingnut Caucus on his terms rather than theirs because they’ve lost their leverage over him.
He’s always had the option of making a deal with that sane majority, but the cost might well have been a revolt against him within the GOP caucus. Now, the revolt is off the table.
I’ll have to leave you to argue with whoever you think you’re arguing about that one. Because it ain’t me, babe. I’ve never “claim[ed] that another Continuing Resolution with no chance of a budget is a sign of leadership.”
Again, I don’t need to defend positions I haven’t taken. Excuse me while I wander off and let you argue with whoever actually took those positions.
Are you under the impression that Boehner never punished the whacko birds for undermining him? I ask you seriously because you seem to post these opinions without knowing very much about what Boehner did or didn’t do.
Peter King: Boehner exit means ‘the crazies have taken over the party’
A small hint, if you will: Burning down the old windmill didn’t work permanently last time. Perhaps burying the Monster in the ice at the North Pole will work better?
Until global warming thaws him out and he starts feeding on polar bears.
What, that nice Captain America boy? He’d ask them politely to share a salmon.
Sadly, I did. You can see the writing on the wall, in the South.
The GOP has further to fall, before the final, self-destruct button is pushed.
My Prognostications
The 2020 GOP Convention will not be able to pick a Presidential Nominee, due to infighting.
25% odds of an internal assassination plot, by 2020, over ideology.
There were a few challengers who lost committee seats, but the faction never lost their effective control of the House agenda, did they?
Yes, now it’s surrendering to them.
Again, Boehner pushed through votes on keeping the government open, not defaulting on the debt, and raising taxes that the whacko birds didn’t want to vote on.
I maintain that Boehner did the best in a completely impossible position. If I were to be generous with your criticism, it would be like you saying that some military commander was incompetent because he lost a battle in which he was outnumbered five to one. If I were less generous with what I think your criticism really is, it would boil down to, “All Republicans suck, just for different reasons.”
I just read the following article on fivethirtyeight. The Hard-Line Republicans Who Pushed John Boehner Out | FiveThirtyEight
Can someone please help me understand the nuts and bolts of how this would have worked had an actual revolt occurred in the Republican caucus? It looks like the breakdown by party is 247 Republicans and 188 Democrats. If 38 Republicans voted for a different speaker, say Louis Gohmert, that would still leave Boehner with 219 votes for him as speaker. Let’s assume the Tea party wing has as many as 60 votes. That would mean a new vote for speaker would go 188 for Pelosi, 187 for Boehner, and 60 for Gohmert. But if that happened, wouldn’t the Tea partiers be worse off? The way I see it, the insurgent Republicans would need at least 189 votes against Boehner. Is their that many Tea Party Republicans in the House? My question is how exactly would they have ousted Boehner without making Pelosi the speaker in the process?
The voting process requires an absolute majority of the voters, including abstentions. As long as the Democrats only had 188 votes, new rounds of voting would take place until one side, presumably the Republicans, got 218 members to agree.
I don’t know if I’d go quite so far, but I mostly agree. I think he did okay given the circumstances. I don’t think the rhetoric he used at times was necessary or acceptable.
I see. So with 38 votes, Boehner would only have 210 votes instead of the necessary 218. Is there a procedure in place in the event nobody can get the required 218 votes?
I think they just revote until someone does.
They have another vote.
*Not a joke. This was the subject of the (serious) last question in the first Republican presidential debate, and was picked by Fox News as apparently being a terrific question to ask. I believe the question was basically “have you heard from God lately, and what has He been telling you to do [in terms of policy objectives]?”
Uh huh.
I don’t follow politics as closely as a lot of you do here but what I do see on the streets is something that I would not be surprised to see in Washington. Quite a few republicans are switching sides right now. They don’t like the liberal left but see the radical right as far more dangerous and threatening to our country. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we didn’t start seeing some serious defections among the republicans.