The Democrats have plenty of creatures like Boehner. But in the new Speaker of the House, the Republicans own the perfect archetype — the quintessential example of the kind of glad-handing, double-talking, K Street toady who has dominated the politics of both parties for decades. In sports, we talk about athletes who are the “total package,” and that term comes close to describing Boehner’s talent for perpetuating our corrupt and debt-addled status quo: He’s a five-tool insider who can lie, cheat, steal, play golf, change his mind on command and do anything else his lobbyist buddies and campaign contributors require of him to get the job done.
It’s okay to admit that John Boehner is just Steny Hoyer with some waterworks added in for fullness of character. But when comparing John Boehner to Steny Hoyer, it’s important to remember this sequence from Annie Hall.
Allison: I’m in the midst of doing my thesis.
Alvy Singer: On what?
Allison: Political commitment in twentieth century literature.
Alvy Singer: You, you, you’re like New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps and the, the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, right, and the really, y’know, strike-oriented kind of, red diaper, stop me before I make a complete imbecile of myself.
Allison: No, that was wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.
Alvy Singer: Right, I’m a bigot, I know, but for the left.
And, you know, that’s still an important distinction. It’s not a distinction that will excite anyone, I know. But it matters, a lot, that Boehner is a bigot for the right, that he’s a creature of the right, and that he is going to pursue ends desired by the right.
There are times when idealism is in high demand. This isn’t one of those times. This is an time of trench warfare, of three yards and a cloud of dust.
But let’s go back to Taibbi, since he seems to be about to get on a roll…
It’s hard to imagine that in all of American political history there has been a more unlikely marriage than John Boehner and the pitchfork-wielding, incumbent-eating Tea Party, whose blood ostensibly boils at the thought of business as usual. Because John Boehner is business as usual, a man devoted almost exclusively to ensuring his own political survival by tending faithfully to the corrupt and clanking Beltway machinery.
I woke up this morning with this on my mind. How the hell is Boehner going to pull this off? He’s got to be kidding himself. You can’t exist for long in a no-reality zone. Will Boehner survive the whole year?
“trench warfare, of three yards of dust” – well put! This is a good question, Booman! Maybe I’m old fashioned on this but I think drinking on the job is a bad thing. He may be enjoying his “success” right now but to exploit an metaphor, he’s caught in a pincer action.
fingers not working today
He could run into trouble for his drinking or his philandering. But he is for sure going to run into a problem trying to manage his freshmen. They are going to turn on him, Jules-style:
That’s what I was being oblique about – imo anyone who is drinking on a job that high pressured and public can’t control it and my guess (Frist here) is partly due to pressure; when they turn on him he’ll really be drinking and it will show. any consequences?
The anti-Latino bill is already in the hopper.
Will Boehner survive the whole year?
Orange Julius will survive because he has the Senate to blame. Maybe I think too much of the Pukes political ability, but I believe The Tan Man wouldn’t be Speaker if the Pukes had taken the majority in the Senate. That since they are getting next to nothing by the Senate The Tan Man serves as their useful idiot.
Boehner will survive because most of the fools in the House don’t want any job that smacks of responsibility. Look at how they ran from appropriations, despite it being the exact committee to sit on to enact their dream of gutting the government to nothing and getting rid of everyone’s “earmarks”.
Boehner has the job because there’s about only one other person in the House who wants it – and that’s Eric Cantor. And Boehner is smarter and better at schmoozing than Cantor so he has more friends. That’s it.
Maybe someday one of the rest of the crowd will jump up and demand the throne, but I doubt it.
I don’t know about that. Why would Cantor want the job now? He wouldn’t. There is little up-side right now.
Booman,
Your premise fails because you assume, wrongly, that a group that engaged in symbolism for more than a year wants anything more than that. You know what? I think you’re jealous. No matter how self-righteous liberals are about proclaiming to put policy above politics, deep down you wish that liberals had as much discipline as conservatives. Your biggest fear right now is that tea baggers will give John Boehner room to operate in stark contrast to how liberals, white liberals, treated President Obama when he took office thru the last two years. You’re terrified that tea baggers will adopt a streak of pragmatism that will not only ensure Boehner’s success but put the House out of reach for Democrats for a decade or more. Why don’t you just say it. You’re hoping that tea baggers act like liberals have the last two years and do to Boehner what lilberals did to President Obama. If they don’t, Democrats are f*cked!
Teagbagger pragmatism?! That’s one for the books!
What’s the problem? The small group of easily herded true believers will soon be distracted by lord knows how many right wing freakouts about god knows what. Governance will be handled as usual with no problems from the right wing.
I think you’re giving the Tea Party too much credit, and the opportunist leaders behind the supposedly spontaneous movement too little credit.
I recall an at-the-time popular, but now largely forgotten, 1980’s police drama called “Wiseguy,” in which an FBI agent named Vinny Terranova infiltrates an organized criminal group for a season. It boosted the careers of a few now very prominent actors (such as Kevin Spacey, who played a sympathetic, if evil, gun smuggler named Mel Profit for a season). In the show’s third season, the chief bad guy was none other than future Senator Fred Thompson, who played, basically, himself — a charismatic, southern used car salesman who organizes a group of disenchanted racists into forming a white supremacist group called “Pigrims of Promise” and then systematically bilks the members of the group out of their money throughout the time the group is active. Fred Thomspon’s character never does much that is really illegal or racist himself throughout (at one rally, he chides the group for blaming blacks and Jews for their troubles when the real blame lies –holding up a large mirror — with themselves), but he effectively organizes the group which, on its own volition, does engage in hate crime activity (including killing agent Vinny’s own brother, a Catholic priest who worked with people of color in New York.)
This “Wiseguy” portrayal of the “Pilgrims of Promise” has always seemed like the Tea Party movement to me — a varied group of individuals with rightist/racist leanings who feel disappointed about the future of the country with a black man now President, but whom are essentially really the victims, not the perpetrators, of people like Glenn Beck and Fox News on the money side and the Koch brothers and politicians like Boehner on the political side. The Tea Party is a gullible group of suckers whose bland racism is being exploited for power and profit by people who know exactly what they want and how to get it.
The Tea Party is made up of followers, not the leaders they think they are, and that has different implications for the success skilled, if hypocritical, salesmen like Speaker Boehner.
The teabaggers will feel the great pressure to conform to DC standards and will, utltimately, fall in line. They will serve to maintain the same clanking Beltway machinery as Boehner.
He will easily survive.
The Tea Party is an astro-turfed group created by plutocrats intent on rebuilding after Obama was elected; they couldn’t do so directly through the Republican party so they “created” an insurgent party of “Tea Party” types (started on CNBC) and “took over” the Republican party.
Now, when they did this they actually empowered the likes of Sarah Palin to a certain extent and they created a consciousness in the evangelical community that they can play to win in the party too. How that shakes out is one of the mysteries of ’11 and will determine if Romney has a chance in ’12.
But Bohner will be fine; FOX, the radio jocks, and the establishment, and Wall Street will be behind him completely. He’s actually, IMO, going to be a harder opponent than most are giving him credit for. He did a good job introducing himself yesterday and took advantage of the gavel in a way Nancy never did IMO.
It’s going to be interesting.
Ahhh, but here in his backyard he is being touted as nothing more than a small town boy who did good.
After all, they’re just normal, average people who even mow their own lawn.
And certainly he would be more fun to drink a beer with than that old, evil Pelosi lady, right? That’s what matters, right?
Uh, when does Steny Hoyer not pursue ends desired by the right? He doesn’t always succeed but that has more to do with Nancy Pelosi and the Progressive Caucus than anything intrinsic to himself.
Ugh. Jesus. I am so tired of stupid comments like this. You ought to take a closer look at Hoyer’s record and his accomplishments.
You forget, sir. FOX News. The Tea Party contingent is the same brain-dead 30% dead-end Bush faithful, but riled up all over again. They will believe as they are told and have no trouble reconciling logical paradoxes. Roger Ailes will tell them that Boehner cannot accomplish their goals because of traitorous liberal obstructionism, and they will swallow it whole.
George W. Bush pulled it off for eight very long years. Politically, it is easier to survive in a no-reality zone than in a let’s-deal-with-reality zone. And there are a long list of liberal Democrats over the last 50 years who found that out the hard way. Which, by the way, is why the country is in the mess it is in today. We have moved from unreality to unreality as the U-S-A, U-S-A chant has gotten louder and louder.
In reality politics, I see that Obama has hired Bill Daley as the US Ambassador to the International Bankers and Business Corporations lobby. Now he needs to appoint a chief of staff to actually do the chief-of-staff work.
Bush did indeed, but he had Mister 4th Branch who wanted to run things and didn’t want G interfering. Regardless of what the Repubs say (we created our own reality) or Fox news (just lie about it) imho there is a reality out there and things tend to happen in it.
Sometimes I think Taibbi gets the teabaggers, and then he comes out with something that makes me wonder if he does after all. Any question based on the assumption that the teabaggers are anything other than Bush deadenders rebranded is the wrong question.
Were some of those deadenders in tricorner hats sincerely outraged by the bailouts? Hell yes, who wasn’t? Even those of us who supported them were pissed off by the necessity, only we directed our ire at the Wall Street greedheads who actually caused it rather than people who would up on the wrong end of predatory mortgages.
The teabaggers are zero threat to Boehner. He can kiss all the fat cat ass he wants just as he always has. He just can’t do anything to help the working class or people of color, and he never had any intention to anyway.
imo alot of the ppl in tricorners out on the street were unemployed until they found this gig with the Koch bros. Boehner’s problem is the ppl they elected to congress, not the ones out on the street with the costumes.
Taibbi’s question is invalidated by his assumption the teabaggers can’t be faked out by the nearest 8th-grader, much less an accomplished grifter like Boehner. As long as he does his scams for God, Guns, and America, he’s home free.