Boehner

Let us now praise the worthy.  Harry Reid said today that with the resignation of John Boehner it can be said that the party of Eisenhower and Reagan is no more.  I agree  pl

Comments

[J]

Crying Boehner gone? Break out the liquor, it's party time!

[turcopolier]

J

What would you have had him do other than what he did? pl

[Fred]

Col.,

"... the party of Eisenhower and Reagan is no more."

There are some bad days ahead for the Republic.

[Medicine Man]

Boehner has been largely powerless over his party for some time. This is the official acknowledgment of the underlying reality. I'm afraid that things are going to get even more screwed up and acrimonious in the House now.

Col., do you think there is any chance the Dem minority and the rational Republicans in the House may combine to elect the new speaker? Or are things too polarized for that?

[Margaret Steinfels]

Not a fan, but I found his statement clear-cut, even inspired. ""Last night I started thinking about this, and I woke up. I said my prayers as I always do, and I decided, you know, today’s the day I’m going to do this. As simple as that," Boehner said.

The Francis effect? Or the Liberty Cacus Chinese torture effect?

[Tyler]

Cuck down! Cuck down!

[turcopolier]

tyler

"Cuck down! Cuck down!" What does that mean? pl

[different clue]

Medicine Man,

There is a chance of that IF the ambitious Pelosi can set aside her desire to be Speaker again. If she can get all her Democrats to vote for a Rational Republican who is not detestable to some or many of her ever-less-willing Democrats, then maybe a Rational Republican can get elected Speaker.
No Rational Republican will vote for ANY Democrat for Speaker.

And I suspect growing numbers of the "Flownover Country" Democrats have been getting quietly more and more furious at Pelosi's vast and total money-based brute-power domination of the Democratic Caucus as well as her pro-bicoastal anti-interior actions over the years on things like Free Trade. So some of them may not be "her" Democrats anymore.

[William R. Cumming]

Believe he will be missed once his replacement elected.

[HankP]

I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did. Herding cats would seem to be a nice relaxing retirement gig for him after dealing with the schism in the GOP ranks. Not sure if anyone will be able to square the circle between merely conservative Republicans and the Tea Party brigade. It's a hell of a thing for a majority party to be so riven.

[Larry Kart]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckservative

Tyler means that one of the Right's key so-called Cuckservatives is down, as in "Black Hawk down."

[Stephanie]

Margaret Steinfels,

A bit of both. Apparently Boehner has been wanting to do this for some time. He was expecting to hand over the gavel eventually to Eric Cantor, but as you may recall the latter was unexpectedly voted out by the home folks he’d forgotten about. I think there was also a no-confidence vote in the works that Boehner would probably not have survived. He was waiting till after the Pope’s visit to make the announcement. He’ll push through the bill keeping the government going and then -- après Boehner, the deluge.

[D]

All: Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA): "The dynamics are this: There are anywhere from two to four dozen members who don’t have an affirmative sense of governance. They can’t get to yes. They just can’t get to yes, and so they undermine the ability of the speaker to lead. And not only do they undermine the ability of the speaker to lead, but they undermine the entire Republican conference and also help to weaken the institution of Congress itself."

Weakening the institution of Congress itself is part of the goal of these nihilists. Having spurned the likes of Jim Leach and Connie Morella a decade ago, now there is no longer any room in the GOP for absolutely rock-solid conservatives like Boehner and Dent who are now considered RINOs.

My great-grandfather was a Republican Congressman. My parents met at Young Republicans. When I first registered it was as a Republican. My Republican Congressman was Gilbert Gude and Mac Matthias was my Republican Senator. Neither would be welcome in the Party now, and Matthias was in fact called a "liberal swine" by the Chairman of the Maryland Republican Party while still in office.

I have very reluctantly become a Democrat. I still find the occasional Republican to vote for and I do not like or trust the Democratic Party. But most of them appear to be sane people who want government to function. That is no longer the case with the bulk of Republicans.

[Jill]

I think he's just worn out from being surrounded by dangerously stupid and/or dangerously malignant personalities. If I had to deal with his party, I too would drink, cry, and paint myself orange.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Shouldn't he have resigned years ago, when his own party went against him on a number of occasions?

I think that is what they do in EU.

[Tyler]

Sir,

What Larry Kant said.

The party of Eisenhower and Reagan could work in an America that wasn't dedicated to racial grievance politics. That country is no more.

[Tyler]

D,

Lmbo. Congress was unable to act when it decided the power of the purse was too big and scary to use. Pretending that this Congress hasn't ceded it's power for the last 16 years is an amazing denial of reality

[Origin]

The party of Eisenhower that acted with civic responsibility and pragmatic, businesslike decisions and conservative application of governmental power for civic good is very far in the past.

What we have now is not the end of Reagan's party, but a party and ideology promoted by Reagan's ideas gone wild to its extremes that is upon us. It is Reagan who first applied the ideology that demonized the value of government and scorned the concept of collective civic action and pride and replaced it with a false ideology that the regulated of business is the demon, collective action through taxation is evil, and that government should be reduced to the maximum extent as the enemy of freedom, thus eliminating the power of the government to balance the inevitable concentration of economic power into a few power points that entirely crush the average citizen's civic freedom by applying a Randian philosophy run wild.

The result of the extension of those ideas to the extremes is now where every civic element and program of collective citizen action and individual welfare is to be crushed and the civic safety net of Medicare, public education, women's rights to control their own bodies, union action, and environmental sanity are fair game targets for elimination.

The average person in this country now has the same income as in Reagan's time. The Reagan philosophy has vastly enriched and enhanced the power of a very few while keeping the great majority living in quiet desperation and increasing economic stagnation.

Reagan was the prophet of our civic decline. Eisenhower should not be smeared by any association with him.

[Origin]

Rational Republicans? About a likely to exist as a moderate jihadi. To the extent there are rational republicans, most use their reason against the interests of the greatest number of the citizens. The vast majority of Republicans in Congress have simply lost any concept of civic good and commonweal and have adopted some sort of Randian craziness.

[Lesly]

This may explain why: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/john-boehner-in-twilight/2015/09/25/124fc54a-6399-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html

I wish he had chosen to not give us cause to cry over Iraq.

[toto]

Sir,

Regarding Tyler's comment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckservative

It seems that Tyler's comment, and the term itself, provide a fitting illustration to your point.

[HankP]

Babak -

We do not have a parliamentary system, he holds the office of Speaker until someone files a "motion to vacate the chair" and it succeeds. He serves at the pleasure of the majority until the end of this Congress or if there's a successful vote to remove him.

Also, don't think the entire party went against him, only a very vocal minority.

[Origin]

The Prophet's pitch speech sounds like a Republican who might have spoken yesterday. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=dc6_1337047503

[D]

So costly temper tantrums are your preferred use of the power of the purse?

[HankP]

Origin -

I'm no fan of Reagan, but the Tea Party version of the Republican party is worse because they are against the very idea of compromise. I lived through the Reagan administration, he compromised on all kinds of things.

As Shelby Foote said concerning the Civil War, "It was because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise. Americans like to think of themselves as uncompromising. Our true genius is for compromise. Our whole government's founded on it. And, it failed."

Foote was only incorrect in assigning compromise as a unique characteristic of Americans. All government is built on compromise. If not, it's built on slaughter.