Boehner is HISTORY!!!

Doug S.

The protoplasm may be 72, but the spirit is 32!
Lifetime Supporter
Well, fellow American politicos, there may be a glimmer of hope for some improvement in our country's intensely polarized political situation.

Speaker of the House John Boehner has announced his resignation!!!

IMHO Boehner has been the main architect of the gridlock that has paralyzed our government. The actions of Boehner and his partners in crime have...again IMHO...simply showcased the intentions of the Republican Party to defeat any action taken by BOB, regardless of whether those actions would have benefitted the constituents in their districts or not.

Let's hope that the next SOTH is less divisive and our country can move forward now.

Cheers for America's future!!

Doug
 
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I don't think Boehner was good for either party, he can spend more time in his tanning bed. Now all we have to do is get rid of Harry Reid and Facelift Pelosi along with others from both sides and we'll have a good start! There should be term limits so these idiots don't wield so much power and get wealthy in the process.
 

Doug S.

The protoplasm may be 72, but the spirit is 32!
Lifetime Supporter
I SO agree with you, Al on the term limits issue...as well as needing fresh leadership in both major political parties.

Cheers!!!

Doug
 

Larry L.

Lifetime Supporter
IMHO Boehner has been the main architect of the gridlock that has paralyzed our government...Let's hope that the next SOTH is less divisive and our country can move forward now.

No one, and I DO mean no one, has been as divisive as Reid/Pelosi/Obama. No one. And Reid INVENTED "gridlock".

E.g.: REID LET 300+ BILLS (many bi-partisan) SIT ON HIS DESK rather than have the senate vote on 'em. And then there was his "Romney didn't pay his taxes for 10 years" L-I-E...followed up years later with his "Well, he didn't get elected, did he" statement in response to being asked if he regreted having said it. What a WEASEL.

Personally, I'd like to see Trey Gowdy become speaker...buuuuuuuut, he's a bit 'busy' right now...

As regards term limits - Y-E-S-S-S-S!
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
Boehner will be succeeded by someone even less functional. Watch.

You can't herd cats. You guys are missing the point here. Boehner got sick of being beat over the head by the teabaggers and finally said fuck it. The GOP has been hijacked by thugs and zealots.
 

Larry L.

Lifetime Supporter
Boehner will be succeeded by someone even less functional. Watch.

You can't herd cats. You guys are missing the point here. Boehner got sick of being beat over the head by the teabaggers and finally said fuck it. The GOP has been hijacked by thugs and zealots.

...just like the Democrats have been hijacked by thugs and zealots from faaaaaaaaaaar left.
 
Totally agree Jim. Problem is 'Hastert Rule'. Don't know why speaker thinks he has to abide by a majority of the majority rule. To avoid shutdowns he ignores it anyway and passes with a combination of GOP and Dems. Isn't government supposed to be a compromise? Not for Teabaggers.
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
REPUBLICANS aren’t big fans of Karl Marx, but perhaps they should ponder his observation that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. As preposterous presidential candidates dominate the polls and extremists topple congressional leaders, the Republican Party is headed for a replay of the catastrophic Goldwater revolt of the early 1960s. It may be an entertaining spectacle, but it’s dangerous.

The Republican Party has long been divided into comparatively moderate and conservative factions, but historically the conservatives were realists, too. Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, the great conservative leader of the mid-20th century, understood that his side had to make incremental steps toward its goals. It had to devise detailed policy alternatives to Democratic proposals, work with party leadership and build coalitions both within the party and across party lines.

But the early 1960s witnessed an overthrow of Taftian realism. The radicals who coalesced around Senator Barry Goldwater’s insurgent presidential campaign were zealots. They had no interest in developing a governing agenda. Their program consisted mainly of getting rid of the New Deal and every other government effort to promote the general welfare. As Goldwater famously wrote: “My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones.”

Goldwater’s followers viewed any Republicans who wanted to govern as traitors to be stamped out. They accused their own leadership of conspiring with Democrats to thwart conservatives; the theme of betrayal from within had been the essence of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s populist appeal. They had no strategy other than taking over the party and nominating Goldwater. He would win the 1964 election, they believed, because a hidden majority would flock to the polls when presented with a candidate who wasn’t what we would now call “politically correct.”

Years ago, I wrote a history of the Republican civil war between the moderates and radicals of the Goldwater era. I’m sufficiently alarmed, watching history repeat itself, that I now work as a research consultant for the Main Street Partnership, an organization of over 70 members of Congress who represent the moderate-conservative wing of the Republican Party. Their rivals are members of the Freedom Caucus, who would rather close the government than compromise.

Once again, the battle is between Republicans who want to govern and those who don’t. The radicals have no realistic alternative solutions of their own. Even to contemplate the negotiations and compromises such policies entail would sully their ideological purity.

Senator Goldwater, despite his brave talk of repeal, was an isolated, powerless legislator. The extremists who opposed John A. Boehner as speaker are likewise a small faction without the ability to accomplish any positive program. InsideGov, a government watchdog site, recently came up with a list of the least effective members of Congress, as determined by the percentage of bills they sponsored that went on to pass committee. Ideological extremism correlates closely with legislative impotence.

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That’s unsurprising, since many members of the Freedom Caucus put a higher priority on scoring purity points than on carrying out the nation’s business. Its chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, is, by this accounting, the second-least effective member of Congress. The only one who’s even less effective is another longtime critic of Mr. Boehner, Representative Steve King of Iowa, not one of whose 94 sponsored bills has passed the committee stage. Most of Mr. Boehner’s harshest critics lurk at the bottom of the Lugar Center’s Bipartisanship Index. Representative Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, who triumphantly tweeted “Today the establishment lost” after Mr. Boehner’s resignation, is ranked last.
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The Republican Party’s unhappy ideological adventure in the early ’60s ended in disaster. Goldwater not only lost the election in a landslide, but he dragged down the entire Republican ticket. The main result of conservative overreach was to hand President Lyndon B. Johnson the liberal supermajority he needed to pass Medicare and Medicaid.

The present resurgence of anti-governing conservatism is also likely to end badly for Republicans. The extremists have the ability to disrupt the Congress, but not to lead it. Their belief that shutdowns will secure real concessions is magical thinking, not legislative realism. And the more power they gain, the less likely it becomes that a Republican-controlled Congress can pass conservative legislation, or indeed any legislation at all.

It’s true that sometimes no legislation is better than bad legislation. But the United States faces real problems, including stagnant wages, family instability, infrastructure collapse and long-term indebtedness. If Republicans can’t advance their own solutions, they’ll have to deal with what Democrats — or harsh realities — impose on them. Paralysis is not a plan.

The rebranding of Republicanism as a force for anarchy has spilled into the presidential contest and threatens the general election chances of the eventual nominee. The Republican establishment, and the party’s governing majority, have the power to quell this insurgency, whether by abandoning the so-called Hastert rule, which requires a majority of the majority to approve of legislation before it can come up for a vote, or by mounting primary challenges of their own. It’s too late for Mr. Boehner to face down the radicals, but his successor will have to if the Republican Party is to have a meaningful future.

Geo*ffrey Kabaservice is the author of “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party.”

This has, in a sense, nothing to do with party affiliation. Governing by majority rule is a permanent part of the American political landscape. Refusing to govern, by means of political obstruction, is also a permanent part of the political landscape, unfortunately. Preventing the national legislature from doing anything whatsoever sooner or later discredits not only those bodies, but the fools who prevented anything from happening. It's always been a mystery to me why people who have such contempt for government so avidly yearn to be part of it. The answer, of course, is that it is a VERY easy job, if you do it the way they do- don't show up, don't pass anything, collect your huge salary, and then become a lobbyist when your disgusted constituency throws you out. (Eric Kantor, for example) Becoming part of the government and then refusing to govern is not an intelligent long-term tactic.

I never thought I would respect Boehner. I do now. By resigning, he's avoiding a government shutdown- possibly- and doing more for his country than he could have done by staying in office.
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
I edited poorly above- my apologies. The piece is from today's NYTimes (don't bother reading it, Larry, okay?) and when I copied it, other things came over as well. I will try to fix it. My point of view stands, as I'm sure you know.
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
..just like the Democrats have been hijacked by thugs and zealots from faaaaaaaaaaar left.

No, we haven't, Larry. Not all of us believe that government should provide a free lunch for anyone. The difference between us is that I've read your agenda and you haven't read mine. I'm plenty conservative- I voted for a Republican in the last election here in MD and I'm glad I did- but I'm not a teabagger and I'm going to pick and choose my points of view based on what I believe, not some kind of idealogical litmus test. And surprise, I don't like Hillary either. If Kasich wins the nomination, I'll probably vote for him.
 

Larry L.

Lifetime Supporter
...No, we haven't, Larry. Not all of us believe that government should provide a free lunch for anyone.

...just as all conservatives don't back the Tea Party 100%, Doc.

But, it appears more Demos back the fringe element of THEIR party over the rest of the contenders. How else can one explain the huge popularity of Bernie Sanders vs. Hillary or whomever? How else could one explain the big crowds HE gets vs. the "crowds(?!)" Hillary, et al, attract? :shrug:
 

Terry Oxandale

Skinny Man
Jim's post in interesting. Boehner was less extremist than the extreme right wanted, he tried to set up deals, but ultimately became frustrated that he couldn't even gather enough of his own party's votes to seal a "deal". I'm guessing it's just a matter of time before the TEA party evolves itself into an unsustainably extreme position (if not already there), at which point the more moderate conservative crowd will provide a more rational leadership role that may actually be productive again.
 

Steve

Supporter
..just like the Democrats have been hijacked by thugs and zealots from faaaaaaaaaaar left.

No, we haven't, Larry. Not all of us believe that government should provide a free lunch for anyone. The difference between us is that I've read your agenda and you haven't read mine. I'm plenty conservative- I voted for a Republican in the last election here in MD and I'm glad I did- but I'm not a teabagger and I'm going to pick and choose my points of view based on what I believe, not some kind of idealogical litmus test. And surprise, I don't like Hillary either. If Kasich wins the nomination, I'll probably vote for him.


Jim, I agree with your points above. Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, to some extent, represent factions of the far right Republican party that refuses to compromise or work across the isle in order to move forwars. These idealogues are so rigid they simply can't govern...and so we have gridlock even with the republicans controlling both houses. Boehner is a bit of a schmuck, though, and a different leader may have more success. I do think Hastert would have been more effective under similar circumstances.

Having said that, a President who refuses to cross the isle compounds the problem to a great degree. Further, the rise in popularity of Bernie Sanders, such that he's leading Hillary in several polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, is even more frightening. The Wall Street Journal estimates that Bernie's proposed programs would cost at least 18 trillion dollars over the next 10 years (and that's on top of the 19 trillion of debt we arlready have plus the projected budget deficits for the next 10 years). Nearly 1/3 of white democrats favor Bernie currently. That's every bit as frightening as the republicans who favor Trump.
 
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