As I have pointed out repeatedly, the following is not technically true.
Washington correspondent for The New Yorker Ryan Lizza said Boehner has to bring Republicans some concession – the medical device tax, or a shorter delay of the individual mandate, for example – if he wants to preserve his job.
In other words, Boehner cannot put forward a bill that funds the government, without some sort of Obamacare concession attached.
“The consensus seems to be that if he puts a clean continuing resolution on the floor, and gets no concessions whatsoever after shutting down the government, that he will lose his job as Speaker,” said Lizza. “That’s the bind he’s in right now.”
The Speaker of the House is elected by the whole chamber and, by the rules, does not even need to be an actual elected member of Congress. The Republicans could make Clint Eastwood or Rob Schneider the Speaker if they wanted to. And the Democrats could assure that Boehner keeps his job either by voting for him or by abstaining from the vote, or by some combination of both.
What this means is that Boehner can, at any time, decide that he can’t effectively lead the Republican Party but he can lead the House. The Democrats would have every reason to agree to that arrangement, because there are enough reasonable Republicans in the House to pass immigration reform and to restore the old system of using the appropriations committees to make sensible investments for the future, and to raise the debt ceiling, and perhaps even to do some (very) minor gun violence control legislation.
If Ryan Lizza is correct that Boehner can’t maintain support from the Republican caucus if he doesn’t win some concession from the president, then his career is over as leader of the House Republicans. If he makes a deal anyway, to avoid a financial armageddon, for example, then the division of the Republican Party will be completed whether or not Boehner stays on as Speaker because a rump of moderate Republicans will have already joined with the whole of the Democratic caucus to break the back of the Tea Party. That coalition might as well have a leader, and if Boehner doesn’t want the job then maybe someone else does.
Regardless of what happens, so long as Boehner doesn’t get any concession and he remains unwilling to destroy our country’s credit rating, the grip of the Tea Party will shortly be broken and the Republican Party effectively divided.
That is what we are currently witnessing. This is an absolute prerequisite if we want President Obama to have anything resembling a functional second term in office, and the administration is well aware of the need to have and to win this showdown right now.
As for people who are complaining that the Democrats are not fighting the sequester-level of appropriations in the continuing resolution, please remember that the government is shut down even without the Democrats asking for higher, more sensible spending, and that the Senate’s CR only lasts 45 days, and that we’d rather have a fight in mid-November after the GOP has been divided than right now when all it would do is make us share some portion of the blame for the shutdown. We’ll have that fight soon, and on a battlefield heavily-tilted in our favor. That’s the point.
The only thing Orange Julius would lead is a brigade to the nearest bar. He wants all the perks of being the leader but none of the responsibility.
Frankly – if Boehner had any presidential aspirations and was half as smart as he thinks he is then this would represent an incredible chance to capture the middle, look like a hero to the entire country and use the Dem-Rep coalition to dictate his agenda. How much would Big Business pay to rid themselves of the uncertainty that is the Tea Party? Just askin…
That’s big if to hang on things.
Speaking of how John Boehner is astoundingly bad at his job, his stupid strategy of passing partial funding bills in order to pressure the Senate just collapsed because he couldn’t even get the House to pass them.
they were designed to fail. It let’s the Republicans argue that they tried to keep the museums open, help vets, etc., but all the Democrats voted against it.
Plus, it’s just a stalling tactic.
And the article suggests another possibility that I will have to investigate: that they took the votes to prevent the Dems from forcing a vote on a clean bill. I don’t know quite what they mean or whether they referring to the bills or the rules under which they were considered. It could matter for tomorrow’s votes.
I don’t think it was supposed to fail in the House, though. It looks like they got screwed by their own plan to suspend normal order to avoid amendments.
Which is about par for the course with these clowns.
Yes, I suspected it was related to the rule. But I don’t think they cared if it passed since it provides them the vote they want either way, and the excuse. I am sure they knew that these votes would fail.
You sure about that, huh? Questions:
Yeah, I am sure.
They would have needed almost half the Democrats to support these bills in order for them to pass. They never thought that that would happen.
I gotta say I loved the talking point heard from many Dems in response to these piecemeal budget votes: the House leadership was picking winners and losers, they said. Hoisted on their own petard, eh?
I can see that Boehner got the Dem caucus to vote against funding the National Parks and other popular programs. It still seems to me like an easy vote for the Dems to explain, and it was a shutdown day wasted, so I remain believing the GOP strategy is poor.
Interesting. I didn’t know this but it says two thirds of the votes were required for passage. No wonder they didn’t make it out of the House.
I know I’m being dense, but I still don’t get it. The theory is that either
a) Boehner starts working with Democrats, as the Dem-and-moderate-Rep supported Speaker, or
b) Boehner gets some concessions from the president and remains purely-Republican Speaker, or
c) Boehner is willing to destroy our country’s credit rating, and remains Republican Speaker?
I’m not sure which of those is most likely.
However, if a) is largely correct, that requires the ‘moderate’ Republicans to not only vote for a so-called clean CR, but then to vote for a majority-Democratic-supported Speaker? The former is possible. But isn’t latter primary death for any Republican anywhere.
Even if the majority-Democratic supported speaker is the same speaker we have now?
Don’t you think? If Boehner becomes majority-Democratic supported, he’ll be more reviled than William Ayers. Or Benedict Arnold. ‘Suddenly, everything is clear: all this time, Boehner was working with Obama to undermine America.’
And I can’t really blame them. If Pelosi suddenly owed her speakership to the Republicans, I’d work like hell to remove any remaining so-called Democrat who supported her.
Two things on that.
First, Boehner probably can’t imagine making that kind of deal precisely because he would be the figurehead of a very significant rupture in the party, and, yes, he would be reviled for it.
Second, this kind of rupture is what the administration is forcing on the House Republicans as we speak, simply by being reasonable and firm.
It doesn’t really matter if Boehner agrees to lead the new governing coalition, as long as the new governing coalition is established. If Boehner is replaced by a wingnut, then we will in a much different situation that won’t be good for the Republicans who are totally fed up with the Tea Party.
The opening is there to break this and fix it.
It might not be overly obvious just yet, but the outline is beginning to take shape. It started as soon as Obama was reelected, with the rejection of Boehner’s Plan B, followed by the delay in Sandy emergency funding, and then the refusal to negotiate on the budget. Now we are dealing with the consequences of those decisions. It has to be resolved.
A new, majority Democratic, governing coalition in the House requires how many Republican votes? 17?
For a while there, you kept saying, ‘We just don’t have the votes in the Senate,’ for something or another. (A better health care bill, if I recall.) Do the votes exist for this?
Peter King got 5 ‘moderate’ votes against the current madness. Which 17 Republicans, specifically, vote with 100% of the Democrats as part of this new governing coalition? Who are they?
Seems easier to envision a new wingnut Speaker, one who we know is willing to destroy our country’s credit rating.
Let’s try to keep it somewhat simple.
Pretend for a moment that Boehner allowed a clean CR vote.
How many Republicans would vote for it?
The answer depends on circumstances, and it isn’t quite the number we’re looking for. The number we’re looking for is the number of Republicans who want a clean CR rather than an extended shutdown. It’s not a number we will ever know for certain, but it exists in some Platonic sense.
By many accounts this number is somewhere north of 180 Republican members of the House.
These are the folks who feel like they are being bullied and don’t agree on the strategy. They mainly support Boehner, although they include many cowards.
If Boehner’s speakership were challenged, we know that under ordinary circumstances that Pelosi would come in first place (with a plurality). What we don’t know is if Boehner could win the support of the majority of his caucus and remain in the second place. The eventual winner would be whoever came in second place.
If Boehner could survive the first vote, then he doesn’t have a problem. But, if it’s true that he would come in third place, then the Democrats could save him by a combination of abstentions and affirmative votes for him. They would be willing to do this to prevent a conservative revolt from succeeding.
The key thing here is that the vote in a clean CR is a close proxy of a potential vote for Speaker. If there is a coalition willing to step forward to hand the president a total win and the Tea Party a total loss on the CR and the debt ceiling, then that is the same coalition that can protect Boehner. But, once the coalition is formed, the division is created in the GOP, regardless of what Boehner decides to do.
I am not predicting that he would stay on or that the Dems would be clever enough to give him the chance, but that it what we want to happen and so that is why I am advocating for it.
I’m also emphasizing that we are forcing this kind of cleavage and trying to explain how it can break this impasse in our favor.
Okay. I think I see where you’re coming from! Thanks.
And have you seen this? Goes directly to this discussion:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/01/why-boehner-doesnt-just-ditch-the-right/
Right.
That’s why call the Republican experience a Mass Hallucination.
But there is a reckoning point. The government is shut down, and it will not reopen until the hallucination disappears.
Boehner’s survival strategy is coming to an end. I’m offering him a way out, but he’s probably too dumb to pursue it.
“… he would be the figurehead of a very significant rupture in the party, and, yes, he would be reviled for it.”
Sure he would be reviled for it, but by whom? He would also be cheered for it, by lots of Republicans, and backed on it by the official leadership. Such a rupture in the party might just save the party, in fact it’s probably the only thing that can. I presume the official party leaders know that and would back it. The ones who would revile him for it can follow Cruz out the door.
The acute problem here, as other have pointed out, is no longer that between the Democrats and the Republicans, it’s between two factions of the Republicans. Something’s got to give.
Whether Boehner crosses the TP to save the country (hey that sounds kind of good, “Save the country” — maybe he could live with that: “John Boehner, American hero”); or he doesn’t, and becomes reviled by the other 80% of the country, including the official leaders of his own party — there’s gonna be blood on the tracks.
Either way, can these factions really remain in the same party?
Yes, they need the TP to win elections in 2014, but if they do, that will only intensify the crazy. Talk about chickens coming home to roost.
Am I being unrealistic? We’re in uncharted waters here, but tell me what I’m missing.
if a portion of the caucus revolts and signs a discharge petition on a clear cr. At that point the “blame” will be on the group of Republicans who caved.
My idiot GOP rep in Fl-12 literally put out contradictory statements within 3 hours. First he said he thought this would end in a clean CR. Then he said he didn’t mean to sound defeatist.
I think good portion of the GOP caucus wants the party to cave, but they want someone ELSE to cave. So you get these odd statements from a number of GOP reps predicting defeat, but not suggesting they will cave.
I would think a tea bagger speaker would go for default, and then Obama would take extraordinary measures at which point default is averted and the house brings Obama up on impeachment charges for those measures. Then we’ll see how it goes in the senate.
Possible side show attempt to get the SCOTUS to arbitrate but I’d hope they don’t. Because this would be the chance for Scalia to go for the deathblow.
The other side of it is this. I won’t deny Boehner’s in a dilemma. But if the Bush-Rove-Cheney-McCain establishment, and the so-called multitudes of moderate Republicans across the heartland, cannot get Boehner to revoke the Hastert Rule so the House members who want to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling can do so, it does show you how utterly they have lost control of their own party.
If i were Boehner, I’d be on the phone with Rove and all those guys asking for cover (protection and cash) so I could just say, “Fuck you, Tea Party”. They will definitely lose some seats in 2014.
The Tea Party would be extremely pissed at Boehner, but one possible result of all this, which you did not mention, is that the Tes Party would walk. And no one should try to stop them. At this point I think that would be the best thing that could happen, from every point of view.
I mean, Boehner is a coward and a prick, but one thing you can say for him, he has no genuine attachment to the Tea Party.
I think they’ve utterly lost control of their party. I don’t think that any Republican who says ‘we must revoke the Hastert Rule so the House members who want to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling can do so’ has a future in the party. And I really don’t think that they think that.
I think the Republican Party -is- the Tea Party, in all the ways that matter. Well, by ‘all the ways that matter,’ I mean ‘in primary elections.’
I hope I’m wrong. Maybe they’ll just collect their winnings and go home.
people have no power in the party – the Tea Party people have it all.
And yet, if you believe the Quin poll this morning, membership in the Tea Party has never been lower, and only about 25% of Conservatives consider themselves members.
The smaller they get, the more radical they get, and ironically, the more power inside the GOP caucus they seem to have,
Living in really red state land it has long been my personal observation that many Republicans claim not to be members/supporters of the Tea Party but they vote along with everything the Tea Party wants. They claim not to talk the Tea Party talk, but they do indeed walk the Tea Party walk.
My new GOP Congressman, elected in 2010, has long claimed NOT to be a Tea Party person, but he did proudly proclaim his election as chair of his Freshman GOP class. I see every vote he makes and he’s never cast a vote that departed from the TP line. Therefore, I conclude that the House GOP is the Tea Party, Boehner included.
Ryan Lizza is being dishonest? Well knock me over with a feather!! Don’t our supposed liberal pundits know how the hell government works?
I don’t think he’s being dishonest at all. I think he’s telling the truth about Boehner’s position within his own caucus.
Did you see Costa’s(of NRO fame) reporting today? Boehner likes the perks that come with the job, he just doesn’t like the responsibility. Also, too, why would any other sane GOPer want the job right now? I’m saying that Lizza is just another establishment hack/flunkie who can’t think outside pre-set Village norms.
Well, he may not be thinking of a quite unlikely possibility, that’s true, but he isn’t dishonest. I think he’s actually one of the better reporters in the business.
Really? Just because he gets to profile “important” political figures?
As for people who are complaining that the Democrats are not fighting the sequester-level of appropriations in the continuing resolution, please remember that the government is shut down even without the Democrats asking for higher, more sensible spending, and that the Senate’s CR only lasts 45 days, and that we’d rather have a fight in mid-November after the GOP has been divided than right now when all it would do is make us share some portion of the blame for the shutdown. We’ll have that fight soon, and on a battlefield heavily-tilted in our favor. That’s the point.
You better be right!!!!!!!!
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/01/why-boehner-doesnt-just-ditch-the-right/
Thoughts on this interview.
Fascinating piece. I think he’s right.
But if you think Boehner’s a coward … yes he’s a coward, but he’s also a figurehead. It’s not just the House Republican “moderates” — the whole party is leaderless.
Aye, there’s the rub.
Since Gingrich was run out of town, isn’t it par for the course for Republicans to have a doofus for Speaker? Hastert couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a compass; Tom Delay ran the show. Boehner is a drunk who’d happiest when he’s on the nineteenth hole; problem for him is, the closest he’s got to a Tom Delay is Eric Cantor.
I’ve always thought that the Republicans have the right idea in separating the Speaker/Majority leader position and staffing one with a legacy. Institutionally speaking. I don’t want both those burdens on one person.
There were separate positions under Pelosi too, in fact they had to create a special position when we lost the house for her majority leader.
It does not matter whether the battle comes now or in 45 days or around the debt ceiling in 16 days (likely more, as a result of the shutdown). But when it comes, there must be put in place some institutional restraints on government by crisis and the extreme Republicans must lose substantial policy ground as a result. The penalties must be so grave and painful to the Republicans that no party for at least a couple of generations (for the temptation will be there) governing by extortion again.
But what I can’t figure out is how the transition you are describing happens. What occasions it? Because at the moment Boehner seems drunk and dysfunctional in his strategy and logic.
The only way that happens is for them to lose mid-term elections repeatedly.
I’m tire of hearing about how much Boehner really likes being Speaker. He’s a kept man. He should fall on his sword and resign. That would solve the problem right there, because the Teahadists would not be able to elect one of their own to replace him. Even if Boehner would never leave, isn’t there somebody who could give him the nudge? Some Mormon or Chamber of Commerce type?
I meant “never leave on his own”.
On second thought, it’s very possible that Boehner does have a strategy, it’s just that we in Blogistan tend to be impatient.
Boehner will pull the plug on the maniacs . . . but not just yet. As Booman points out, he knows he can do it any time he wants.
This whole business about how he will be reviled, all the Republicans willing to vote for a clean CR will be primaried, it’s overblown and I’ll tell you why.
Because the longer this goes on, the worse these guys are going to look, the weaker and more isolated they will become.
It doesn’t matter if they ever realize it or not. They may win their seats back in 2014, but they won’t have the clout in the House they now have, because it will be abundantly clear how much damage they did to the party, to say nothing of the nation.
So Boehner may well be doing to them, in a more passive way, pretty much what Obama is doing. Just let them have their fun and then watch while they start taking the heat.
By the time Boehner does let his members vote, he’ll have a lot more moral support, even within the party, than they do. And the beauty of it is, he doesn’t really have to do anything, he doesn’t have to stick his neck out … only wait things out a bit.
This is a clear and persuasive way to explain what Boehner might be doing. Unfortunately, it requires him to appear simultaneously ineffective and full of shit. But it’s a method of sorts, I guess.
He is in a really bad position, after all.
But we already know he ineffective and full of shit. Lazy and cowardly too. So all the more likely this is his strategy.
Can I hold you to this? I’m bookmarking this and will revisit when and if this is over. We DO need to break the backs of the Tea Party, for the President, for the Democratic party, and for the whole country.
Now, if we could somehow purge a large segment of the media from the “both sides are to blame” meme, we might get to the end game sooner.
This piece backs up my argument above. So you might want to put it in your bookmark to:
http://www.politicususa.com/2013/10/02/republicans-disarray-democrats-move-gop-leverage-debt-ceiling
.html
I see Boner as a profoundly comic figure. Basically his “strategy”, outlined above, is that the safest place is in the eye of the hurricane. He can let the Tea Party fight it out to the death (their own) with the Democrats, he can pretend to be on their side, even egg them on — knowing all along that the Democrats will absolutely cream the Tea Party and thus accomplish all the work for him that he absolutely cannot do himself.
This could be a comedy with W.C. Fields in the role of John Boner.
Well, he also has to keep his seat. I took a look at Boehner’s district, and it appears to be pretty damn red. He didn’t even have a Democratic opponent in 2012. Could he survive a primary challenge?
Of course, if there are Republican moderates who are willing to revolt, how many do we need to bring a discharge petition?
I thunk you’ve got it. Constituents are going to get pretty pissed off when enough of them aren’t getting paid.
Here’s what’s happening already:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/01/house-republicans-clean-cr_n_4024755.html
we need 16 Republicans for a discharge petition, but that is a deeply disloyal thing to do and it would be close to impossible to find the votes unless the Speaker secretly wanted it to happen.
By the way, Booman, I just love the title of this post.
See the great comment by Steve LaBonne in BooMan’s previous post.
Thanks for this. I found it, three whole verses of it. Credit where credit is due!
Yes, most enjoyable!
I’m sure several of you already saw this, and will no doubt be entirely unsurprised, but just in case:
The Theology of Government Shutdown: Christian Dominionism
Guess they forgot (or failed to learn) why separation of church and state was such a good idea. Wouldn’t even need to be as brutal as Henry VIII (and a few of his successors) in plundering their wealth with armed troops to get them to shut up. Simply take away their tax exempt status and they’ll shrivel up.
“Regardless of what happens, so long as Boehner doesn’t get any concession and he remains unwilling to destroy our country’s credit rating, the grip of the Tea Party will shortly be broken and the Republican Party effectively divided.”
Sadly, I suspect “unwilling to destroy our country’s credit rating” is just what they want. After all, if they wreck the economy, they’ll be able to get cuts in spending that’ll make the sequester look like loose change in the sofa.
These people have been telling us they’re going to destroy the federal government for 30 years. It’s in their grasp and they live in a kind of insane bubble that’s let them believe in ‘skewed polls’ and consequence free defaults. I seriously think that we’re not dealing with people who dwell in reality.
What POSSIBLY makes you think they won’t do this?