Okay, I didn't see the speech but I trust Ezra Klein's judgment.
Boehner promised almost nothing at all. He certainly didn't set himself up as a foil to President Obama, or anoint himself leader of a new conservative moment in American politics. Rather, his speech had two themes: Humility, and comity. He called his chamber "the people's house," and said "we are carrying out their instructions." He spent a lot of time on the "scar tissue" that has built up under "some of the rituals that have come to characterize this institution under majorities, Republican and Democratic alike." He promised a new era of openness and minority cooperation in the House. He emphasized his recognition that he held the gavel not because Americans liked him or his party, but because they were angry at the government and the Democrats who ran it.
It was, I think, as smart a speech as I've seen a politician give -- in part because it was savvy about what it didn't say, which is a rare virtue in Washington.
If this is true, the first thing that comes to mind is a question: How do the Democrats manage to allow a slime-ball like John Boehner walk away with the prize? I don't think we're going to see anything more than an occasional tenuous hold on power by Congressional Dems until they figure out how to be politicians.
Well, not everything about the new speaker's agenda will help him keep power. Not by any means.
Of course, the speech is the easy part. The rules Boehner is pushing through the House make it vastly easier to increase the deficit through tax cuts, an outcome that won't sit well with Boehner's repeated pledge to hold down the debt. Moreover, Republicans are already having to break their own rules to pursue the repeal of health-care reform without paying for it -- a procedural offense in favor of a symbolic vote that, in addition to increasing the deficit, won't exactly usher in a new era of respect and esteem between the two parties.
Or among the two or three parties masquerading as a unified party of the right.
