As this news is now a few hours old I’m surprised nobody else has posted. I could have linked any number of stories, but for now I’ll just do a drive-by report that Speaker Boehner has announced his resignation. There’s speculation about whether he was pushed by the base and even if somehow the Pope’s visit had something to do with it. There is no modern precedent for leaving the Speakership midterm. Since it’s not a scandal, even Dems are praising his leadership.
Please share widely!
Booman Tribune called this change a few days ago.
According to the Washington Post:
Pelosi has made a deal that will save Planned Parenthood, and that is awesome. Because the Republican plan to “stop abortions” by eliminating the place where millions of women get contraception & other healthcare was just going to make life tougher for millions of people.
The thing I worry about is that the leaders of these far right Republicans are going to go back to their base & say, “Yay! You’ve made Boehner regret compromising with Obama!” and motivate those millions of people to GOTV in 2016.
said the Tea Party is just nutty enough to cause a shutdown anyway.
The Vox.com link about Boehner explaining his job on Jay Leno’s show.
The far-right is now willing to compromise because they managed to get rid of a leader who knew how to compromise?
They’ll “compromise” and allow the government to continue through December.
Then the shinola will hit the fan.
The Establishment wing of the GOP will join the Democrats in holding off the immediate shutdown. The far right/Tea Party wing will not. They will be a dissenting voice, vote against compromise and claim to be the purer form of conservatism, all of which will play well in their gerrymandered districts.
The less extreme GOP members of Congress who live in blue states will pay the price during the next election, not the hard-bars who live in red states. This is not a good situation for progressives, as our folks will have nobody to talk with, to negotiate with, in the next Congress.
If the Dems can re-take the Senate then we have a chance of avoiding catastrophe, but the comments of another BMGer talking about Hillary’s coattails??? Delusional. She is helping to sink the Dem’s chances of re-taking the Senate, let alone the House, the much tougher task in 2016.
“establishment delaying shut down”
But I totally don’t agree that Hillary will sink the Dem chances of re-taking the Senate.
Hillary’s a full-throated defender of women’s rights & women’s healthcare. She’s going to bring out a number of women voters who will be turned off by the extremist Republicans of the House.
According to Gallup in May, 2013 57% of women identified as pro life, despite the idea that ‘women’s health’ was pro choice. There is a new poll on Huffington that is thrilled that 50% FINALLY identifies as pro choice, although I did not see a gender breakdown like on Gallup. Of that, 45% still were pro life.
That full throated defense may not have the votes attached to it that you seem to think. Women are not the monolith that Democratic strategists seem to think.
(For the recrd, I am pro choice myself, but notice that younger women can be rigidly pro life, which I think is a function of not having been around when abortion and contraception WERE illegal)
I highly recommend listening to this “On The Media” segment on how misleading the standard polls can be. Short version is that many people will pick the “always/mostly illegal” choices but then answer other questions in a way that makes it clear that they don’t really agree with that . . .
http://www.onthemedia.org/story/understanding-abortion-polling/
The nutjobs of which you speak (are they really “right” in any conventional sense of the term?) have a deep need to lose, to fail, to feel angry and betrayed.
This will further that narrative for them.
This is not a rational calculus but a destructive yearning. They do not know what to do if they win; they do not know how to win any more than how to govern.
with Boehner’s resignation. The budget will pass with Planned Parenthood funding as a result of Democratic support. Pelosi’s support will be necessary for Boehner’s successor to coble together a viable governing coalition.
Speaker frontrunner is Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and next in line for Majority Leader is Whip Steven Scalise (D-LA), the wack job who said he was “David Duke without the hood”.
Now, I know it’s wishful thinking BUT if we could nominate a Dem with coattails – Hillary – we might be able to flip the 30 seats needed to make Nancy Speaker!
Fred Rich LaRiccia
I don’t see how Hillary Clinton has anything to do with this. My understanding is that any measure passed while Mr. Boehner is in office will last through December. That’s well before any Democratic nominee is selected.
The GOP is apparently imploding. It appears that they will do everything in their power to take America with them.
I certainly hope that shutting down the government is political suicide for the GOP, regardless of the Democratic nominee. Sadly, it appears that the current crazies will have done their damage by the November 2016 general election — more than a year away.
It looks to me as though the new Pope has persuaded Mr. Boehner that his party’s position is immoral. That message appears to be lost on the rest of the GOP pack.
If nothing else, perhaps the American public and voters will see, explicitly, just how superficial the GOP alignment with The Vatican is and has been all along. The new Pope has cut off the GOP agenda at its knees. The contrast between the visits to Congress of the Pope and Mr. Netanyahu is striking.
The GOP values money, greed, and power over ANY religious dogma or belief system. The question is whether that value system is shared by the American public. My intuition suggests that the answer to that question will be resolved before the first primary of 2016. Sadly, I fear that the pain — both long-term and short-term — associated with that resolution will be real and severe.
The consequences of our political dysfunction are, I think, about to become very immediate. I think it’s too early for any gloating.
In fact it will be a kiss of death
This country needs Democratic votes in favor of keeping the government alive. Your party has already burned at the stake an ultra-conservative Speaker of the House and we are fortunate that, for whatever reason, Boehner seems to have chosen to not crash this country on the shoals. You can try to make Democratic leaders your enemy but it is your party that wants to deny cancer and reproductive health to women. It is your party that killed the Im/Ex Bank (and I am not a fan) but the “adults” in your party love that corporate welfare and your Tea Party friends don’t.
Don’t blame Pelosi. I am not a fan of hers but your comment is desperately dishonest.
I was responding to the remark that Pelosi’s help would be critical to help the new Speaker pass a budget; approval from Pelosi would have another Speaker walking the plank.
ND for the record, the House passed several budgets under Boehner. They died under the thumb of Reid.
This administration may be the first to never have a Federal budget during its two terms.
No, no, no. This is what you wrote:
in fact it will be a kiss of death
The budget will be passed under Boehner. Your team already made him walk the plank, so don’t blame the Democrats for joining with him to rescue the country from your party’s insanity.
If your party wants to make your next Speaker walk the plank, that is your party’s choice. If your party wants to eliminate the funding of cancer and other reproductive service for women, it is not Pelosi, Reid or Obama’s fault. As long as people like you belong to the GOP and try to blame others for the miscreants in your party, the GOP will continue to bury their own Speakers. Unfortunately, the rest of the country pays the price. Don’t lay this on any Democrat.
I stand by my comments. Pelosi and the Democrats will have to provide the votes needed to produce a budget agreement.
BTW, the last time I checked, the US is operating with a budget. Don’t shift the blame from Pelosi to Reid.
for GOP talking points used for argument.
I think that if Pelosi is front and center on this, that this is evidence that the Democrats’ goal is to force a shutdown so they can blame the resulting damage on the tea party.
Almost got me there, good one! 🙂
Your otherwise-factual response conveniently omits the reason WHY the House was unable to pass a federal budget under Mr. Reid — the thuggery of the House GOP, who were just as irresponsible then as they are now.
“Thuggery” is a gentle characterization of elected Representatives who explicitly made the destruction of Barack Obama their overriding priority. One of Barack Obama’s misguided blunders was to attempt to reach out to attackers sworn to destroy him in the naive belief that those attackers would do the right thing when given evidence of his flexibility.
The political assassins of the GOP instead exploited the political weakness resulting from that naivety. I say “political assassins” because the GOP collectively machine-gunned the courageous and hopelessly naive President who approached them carrying the white flag of truce.
This generation of GOP Representatives is the first in my recollection to so shamelessly sacrifice the national interest to their own private political agendas, in spite of overwhelming evidence of the harm to America and of rejection of those priorities by a majority of Americans.
Let me add to TBD’s list that it is your party that bleats platitudes about “responsibility” and then refuses to pass legislation to pay for the bills it has voted to incur — the entire “debt ceiling” nonsense is flagrantly destructive.
…by never have a federal budget during its two terms? Of course there have been federal budgets during the Obama presidency. Though the sequester may make it feel otherwise at times the government has been operational most of the time. The Constitution prohibits spending without budgeted appropriations.
Annual budget resolutions rarely pass Congress – instead, funding is done through obscure mechanisms like end of year omnibus bills. The whole thing is hair raising really, and few lay people understand how it all works.
The media certainly is not explaining much of the budget process in Congress.
Compared to the budget discipline showed for example in Annual Town Meetings across our state, or even at the state level, the Federal budget has no discipline.
But this should come as no surprise. How can one expect a dysfunctional Congress to have a functioning budget process?
…extending funding until a budget is passed. That’s why the shutdowns can happen – a refusal to pass another continuing resolution.
When did a budget – not a resolution – pass?
…the implication above that somehow it’s Obama’s fault is off base. Couldn’t we just as easily say that the President and the then-Democratic Senate proposed their versions of budgets and the GOP blocked them?
The GOP has been holding America’s budget hostage to their increasingly extreme delusions — and to their explicitly expressed fervor to destroy Barack Obama — since 2008.
You are willfully ignoring all that in your passive-aggressive language. When was the last time the GOP agreed to a budget free of extremist right-wing dogma?
.
The GOP is not a real party anymore, nationally speaking. It’s a reactionary sideshow populated by people increasingly out of touch with the Constitution, the majority of Americans, and reality itself. We have a slate of Presidential candidates who are clearly unaware of rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and who offer blatantly impossible proposals without a plan for executing them. They may not be electorally doomed, but they are doing their best to make that happen by appealing to an insanely radical part of their party. Congress, unfortunately, has a core of the same types who got elected on promises they can’t keep. These people are all to the right of the vast majority of people.
Boehner’s demise as speaker is directly due to a party that is not only opposed to governing, but unable to do so. Democrats may not be able to take back Congress, but Americans do not share the “vision” of the 21st century Republicans.
Boehner’s demise is good news in that it’s another sign that the GOP is falling apart. A party needs a semblance of coherence and appeal to more than an ever-shrinking base of lunatics. Gerrymandering and voter suppression won’t work forever. Bring on 2016!
I whole-heartedly agree.
My concern is about just how much damage the miscreants currently masquerading as federal legislators will do between now and when they are removed from office (if they are removed).
I see little evidence so far that the cabal that controls the mainstream media have any interest in making any changes at all. While everything you say is true, I think it is also true that an enormous number of Americans believe things that are demonstrably not true — and will continue to do so as long as the “information” they receive supports their delusions.
Carly Fiorina did not see what she says she saw. Even the stories promoting her “success” in the debate admit this. They continue to trumpet her ascendancy anyway.
As a result, the GOP attack on Planned Parenthood continues unabated — supported by delusional Americans who don’t know and/or don’t care that it is completely groundless.
They will rage against the dying of their light. It’s hard to predict when the end will happen, but they are on their way.
I get stepping down from the position of speaker. That can be done any time, not much of a jolt to the process.
But why resign from his seat in Congress? Why not just announce that he’s not going to run again for the Nov 2016 election? Why create a special election in the near term to fill a seat for a year?
waiting period ticking. Also, it seems like he might just be a little angry with the whole situation.
He says his decision came because of his meeting with the Pope. He is a cradle-Catholic.
I think he’s known for some time that the agenda and values of his party are fundamentally in conflict with the values of his faith. I think his meeting with the Pope persuaded him which was more important to him.
I don’t mean to make a hero of him, because he isn’t. At the same time, I’m somehow reminded of the decision of Representative Robert F. Drinan to step down, also in response to the Pope.
Newt Gingrich left Congress entirely in January 1999 when the GOP repelled against him even though he had just won re-election. Even Bob Livingston, who was supposed to succeed Gingrich, resigned from Congress after withdrawing from Speakership contention.
Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston each stepped down in the midst of scandal. Each would have faced mounting embarrassment, even as back-benchers.
I think this might be the first time we’re seeing the real John Boehner.
He and his party assumed Lewinsky would sink the President, but to their embarrassment they lost seats in 1998, a rare historical feat anyway for the opposition party in the sixth year of a presidency. Yes, he had his own ethical issues previously, but they did not lead to his resignation. Dennis Hastert also opted to leave Congress entirely upon losing the majority rather than stand for Minority Leader. OTOH of course Nancy Pelosi did choose the latter option.
He was on the defensive about his royalty deals, and there was a great deal of discussion about his divorce. Reaction to the irony of Newt Gingrich scourging Bill Clinton about Monika Lewinski, with his own marriage, divorce, remarriage (which ended in divorce in 1999) in full view, was an important factor in his fall from power.
As a teacher, you may appreciate the revulsion that many people felt (I tend to be lower-key about such matters) in reaction to the fact that he met his first wife in High School — she was his math teacher.
The behavior of Mr. Gingrich that Americans knew and talked about was his tawdry treatment of his first wife while he was preparing to to marry his second (in 1981). He subsequently acknowledged that while he was leading the attacks against Bill Clinton, he was himself cheating on his second wife with a congressional aide then in her 20s.
The very fact that you (and therefore we) end up talking about Bill Clinton’s “scandal” — while being simultaneously unaware of Newt Gingrich’s far more profound personal integrity issues — demonstrates the distortions of the media, history, and the way that right-wing control of the media colors history.
It’s true that Bill Clinton had oral sex with Monica Lewinski while he was married. That, in itself, is — for many married couples — not that big a deal. It is also true that Bill Clinton has been married to Hillary Clinton since 1975, it is the first marriage for each of them, and seems to be close and strong today.
I have no particular issues with Newt Gingrich’s very different personal history — I’m married to my third wife (thirteen years this December). I totally understand that we make mistakes when we’re young and we learn from those mistakes.
Newt Gingrich, like so many other GOP politicians before and after, made headline news day in and day out attacking, in very personal terms, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. He led an entire witch-hunt against Mr. Clinton’s “unfaithfulness” (while Hillary Clinton remained steadfastly loyal to, although surely privately furious with, her husband).
I think Americans were revulsed and nauseated by the gross hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich attacking Bill Clinton’s marital behavior while conducting his own life in ways that many Americans found far more tawdry.
We’ve talked about three men who incited the mob against Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky. There are multiple sources like this that show that each was guilty of similar or worse acts. We now know that Dennis Hastert was, at the time, apparently paying hush money (to the tune of $3.5M) to conceal HIS abuse of a former student while Mr. Hastert was a teacher.
Mr. Clinton’s scandal most certainly was NOT the only scandal that forced Newt Gingrich out of office.
speaker in name only — if he didn’t follow the Tea Party marching orders, he would be removed from his “leadership” role. He finally had enough of being forced to play the government shutdown game over each new right-wing hot-button issue, whether repealing ObamaCare or defunding Planned Parenthood.
Now that he’s resigning, the Tea Party no longer has any power over him, and he can freely make a deal with Nancy Pelosi for the votes needed to keep the government running. He’s finally thumbing his nose at the crazies in his caucus who made his life miserable for so many years.
Those crazies, by the way, aren’t so crazy that they don’t know when thev’ve been beat, and so are apparently backing off of their shutdown threat, at least until their next divisive issue comes along.