The sordid last days of the Boehner era

The orange weeper from Cincinnati says he wants to "clean the barn" for his successor, presumed to be Paul Ryan.

The irony is that Representative Ryan is not at all pleased with Boehner's style of barn-cleaning.

It's a sentiment shared by the editors of NRO

and Stephen Moore at Investors Business Daily:

Federal spending in 2016 was already expected to climb by more than $250 billion — or close to $1 billion extra spending each day. This was to be a 6% rise in outlays in a year when inflation is running at slightly less than 2%.

But the budget deal adds to the orgy of spending. The plan raises spending by at least $100 billion over two years and busts through the spending caps for two years.

And it raises the debt ceiling by about $1 trillion for the next year and a half so that Washington doesn't have to deal with it anymore.

What a calamity.

The only victory Republicans have had in six years under Obama is the spending caps, and now they want to punt those away?

Obama dangled the bait of cuts in the long-term income-transfer programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Sure. These are the same Democrats who show TV ads of Republicans shoving grandma over the cliff with her wheelchair. Are Republicans really dumb enough to fall for that Lucy-and-the-football trick again?

And David Harsanyi at The Federalist:

For one thing, the GOP will have to live with the precedent set by the terrible deal in future negotiations. Barack Obama, as The New York Times points out, is now going be able to “break free of the spending shackles” of the imaginary reign of austerity that was brought on by Budget Control Act of 2011. So are all Democrats.

For another thing, conservatives will almost surely see this as a betrayal. The administration came up with the idea of sequestration, and it turned out to be only tangible victory Republicans could claim on spending.

And what the hell is this business of the House voting to reopen the Ex-Im Bank all about?

The left (such as the authors of the above-linked NYT story, as well as Jill Lawrence today at USA Today) are eager to see this as a sign that Reasonable Gentlemen will indeed still prevail and that those wacky absolutist firebrand types have been marginalized.

And this is why there was some degree of controversy surrounding the rise of Ryan to the position of most likely next Speaker.

So, Representative Ryan, what will it be? What does your rise portend?

UPDATE: The very latest signals are not encouraging. Maybe this rise business is not such a certainty after all.