Five days before Christmas, House Speaker John Boehner stood before the Republican-controlled Congress—his Plan B alternative for avoiding the fiscal cliff defeated by lack of votes from his own party, a public humiliation and repudiation of the Speaker’s authority, rare in House history. Choking back tears, Boehner faced his colleagues and surrendered himself to a Higher Authority: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” Boehner intoned.The Serenity Prayer was an odd choice for a guy whose drinking had drawn years of public and private scrutiny... Salon
The role John Boehner is playing -- once again, nine months later -- is pathetic. By now, closing in on a year later, he has become the most wounded (so far) of his coalition's members. A man known for showy weeping, he's dry-eyed now, wearing a grim smile. He may be sleepless and drinking heavily, as he's said to do.
With no serious negotiations in sight, a disorderly and divided Congress slipped closer to a double-barreled fiscal crisis on Thursday as House Republican leaders tried to shift the budget dispute to a fight over raising the government’s borrowing limit.
Trying to round up votes from a reluctant rank and file, House Republicans said they would agree to increase the debt limit to avert a mid-October default only if Democrats accepted a list of Republican priorities, including a one-year delay of the health care law, a tax overhaul and a broad rollback of environmental regulations.
At the same time, Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio signaled he was not ready to abandon a spending fight that could shut down the federal government as soon as Tuesday. Asked whether he would put a stopgap spending bill to a vote free of Republican policy prescriptions, he answered, “I do not see that happening.” ...NYT
The point is not to make political or economic or social sense but to make trouble -- for everybody and with no end in sight. For Boehner, it's a repeat of last goddam mess. Salon catalogued those troubles last January.
The fiscal cliff negotiations were never going to go Boehner’s way and neither were the Republican newcomers who put up the most resistance. An old-school party leader, he had performed in the time-honored manner, offering compromises and cutting deals behind closed doors. But even the whiff of raising taxes was too much for the Tea Party-backed ideologues, those meddlesome freshmen from the class of 2010, whom Boehner had done his best to appease, cajole and discipline. A week after his desperate prayer, the 63-year-old Speaker was forced to stand by as a final budget deal was dictated not by the House, but by Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. Boehner dutifully voted in favor, while most other Republicans, including Boehner’s no. 2, Eric Cantor of Virginia, widely viewed as scheming for Boehner’s job, and Whip Kevin McCarthy, a leader of the conservative Young Guns, voted no. Following the Plan B embarrassment, this was surely a bitter chaser for the veteran lawmaker to swallow. Somewhere in between, Politico reported that Boehner had turned on the old barroom charm, jabbing a finger at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, and said, “Go fuck yourself.” ...Salon
It's a little different now. This time Senate Republicans are at each others' throats.
Republican divisions in the Senate burst into full public view on Thursday. Incensed that hard-liners in his party were slowing final votes on legislation to keep the government open, Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, went to the Senate floor to accuse two fellow Republican senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, of grandstanding for the benefit of their conservative-activist followers. ...NYT
Out here in the real world we don't have the time and money for tears and booze. We're fed up. And economists are warning that this is getting serious. John Boehner is a joke that no longer makes us laugh.
