Things are pretty bad for John Boehner. While the nutters in wingnutopia are doing just fine, the Orange Speaker’s political career is over. It is just a matter of time until he feels the urge to “spend more time with his family”.
That Boehner is doomed is becoming conventional wisdom. The only pathway out of the Republican Party’s manufactured debt crisis is to compromise with Democrats and President Obama. If Orange John takes that route he is doom–even if the final compromise would be judge as a total wingnut Win by any sane person. OTOH, he could continue to try and appease the endless fantasies of the extreme wingnut suicide squad and own the destruction of the economy–which also kills his political future.
Dana Milbank had a solid column up Friday about the slow political death spiral of Orange John and his surrender to the nutter nihilists. This framing of his political future seems spot on:
“Get your ass in line,” Speaker John Boehner had told House Republicans who resisted his plan to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default.
But really, it was Boehner’s butt that was on the line — and late Thursday night, he had it handed to him.
For his six-month-old speakership, it was a grievous if not mortal wound. The legislation under consideration was fairly pointless — a solution to a self-inflicted crisis that faced certain defeat in the Senate — but Boehner made it into a test of his leadership. And rank-and-file Republicans returned a vote of no confidence.
Mostly Dead seems like a generous description of the weakest Speaker of the House in the Modern Era.
Cheers