The hideous effects of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome

In an interview with FNC's Bill Hemmer, John Boehner openly acknowledges that he got punked by the Most Equal Comrade when he offered a gesture of trust in the vilest Freedom-Hater of them all:

When asked about a grand bargain to reduce the debt and deficit with Barack Obama which, ultimately, did not happen, Boehner said that he, Eric Cantor, and Obama had shook on it in the Oval Office, but Obama “walked away from the agreement.”

Boehner explained: “The deal was done. Over $5 trillion worth of deficit reduction… tens of trillions of dollars over the next 20 years in terms of really fixing our entitlement programs and getting us onto a much more solid foundation.”

Boehner insisted that he was “shocked” when Obama walked away, and the “country went through a lot more than we needed to.”

However, Boehner said that he and the president still had a good relationship. When Boehner announced his retirement, Obama called him and said that he was going to miss him. Boehner replied, “Yes you are, Mr. President, yes you are.”

Any ostensible Republican who, even after such a betrayal, brags about a "good working relationship" with the Most Equal Comrade ought to be banished from the party.

There is no excuse for this outlook.

The damage John Boehner has done is enormous.

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.

First thoughts on the Boehner announcement

Pretty clearly, he felt that he was behind the eight ball on the matter of whether to shut down government over Planned Parenthood funding.

There's also a lot of speculation about why the Pope's address to Congress and his one-on-one meeting with Boehner made Boehner cry so much.

He's been hounded by instances such as the recent "jackasses" remark, or the talk he gave to a business group back in his district at which he affected a whine to portray the position of House members who balked at comprehensive immigration reform, or the hardball tactics regarding committee assignments.

Mostly, though, it was in the way he's carried himself. His speech and body language indicated that he did not get it. Movement conservatives, as well as voting citizens of a less-involved conservative bent, never saw a trace of fierceness or urgency. The Speaker came across as a guy who found process more rewarding than victory for his principles.

One reader of this blog strongly suggests that the guy's personal life is out of control.

And then there's the question of who to replace him with. As far as I'm concerned, we can do better than just saying, "Let's go with McCarthy, since there's not much time." He doesn't come across much differently from Boehner, and we have some great alternative possibilities.

How crude and infantile has political rhetoric become in post-America?

Donald Trump may be the king of reckless pronouncements (he's the king of everything, is he not? That's the impression he leaves with his every public appearance), but he doesn't have a monopoly on it.

Hillionaire is no slouch when it comes to wild utterances:

Republicans are reacting furiously to Hillary Clinton linking terrorists and anti-abortion GOPs in a Cleveland speech today.

Clinton referenced Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich in saying that Republicans would ban abortion without exceptions. “Now extreme views about women, we expect that from some of the terrorist groups, we expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world, but it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States,” she said. “Yet they espouse out of touch, out of date policies. They are dead wrong for 21st century America.”

Republican National Committee press secretary Allison Moore said in a statement: “For Hillary Clinton to equate her political opponents to terrorists is a new low for her flailing campaign. She should apologize immediately for her inflammatory rhetoric.”

There is a certain type of Republican who can dish it out pretty handily, too:

Juicy, but I don’t know how scandalized we should be at learning that Boehner holds a view we all assumed he held in the first place. Next we’ll find out that Mitch McConnell thinks Cruz is a jackass too.

This isn’t the first time he’s been accused of saying something privately to fundraisers that he wouldn’t dare dream of saying publicly. Remember when he allegedly told a bunch of donor-class amnesty fans that he was “hellbent” on passing comprehensive immigration reform in 2014? Two months later Dave Brat upset Eric Cantor in their House primary by running hard against illegal immigration. Alas, the elusive dream of more cheap labor for corporate America had to be postponed again.

At a Steamboat Springs event for GOP Rep. Scott Tipton, the Ohio Republican quipped that he likes how Cruz’s presidential campaign keeps “that jackass” out of Washington, and from telling Boehner how to do his job…

“I don’t think it’s terribly speaker-like, and I think it kind of goes against everything that Reagan ever said about disparaging Republicans,” said Ed MacArthur, the president of Native Excavating, who attended the fundraiser…

Another Steamboat Springs resident confirmed Boehner’s remark: “I about fell on the floor.”

“To build coalitions to work together in Washington, D.C., you don’t start it out by calling your colleague a ‘jackass,’” she said.

Turns out the GOP leadership hates grassroots favorites just as much as the grassroots hates the GOP leadership. Dare we assume that Boehner also holds Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh in low regard?

If one is interested in elevating the level of discourse, winnowing the field of not just presidential candidates but admirable public figures generally becomes easier.

We can be fierce in defense of our principles, but let us not leave ourselves vulnerable to charges of going off half-cocked by lobbing the kinds of ill-advised salvos to which the rudderless increasingly resort.

A textbook case of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome

When a Pub House Speaker cannot recognize human freedom's mortal enemy, it's time to replace him:

“If I go down to see President Obama, the Right begins to wonder what I’m up to,” Boehner told the Golf Channel. “The Left begins to wonder what the president is up to. The president has suggested, ‘Hey, do you think it is too much trouble if we play golf again?’ And I have to look at him and say, ‘Yes, because everybody gets bent out of shape, worried about what we are up to, when all we are really gonna do is play golf.’”

The resolution by 

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC)

96%

 contends that “the Speaker has, through inaction, caused the power of Congress to atrophy, thereby making Congress subservient to the Executive and Judicial branches, diminishing the voice of the American People.” Instead of using the power of the gavel to push conservative policies, Meadows maintains that the speaker uses it to squash nonconformist conservative members.

Boehner railed against blogs and talk radio in his discussion with the Golf Channel’s David Feherty. He claimed that when Republicans took over the Congress in 1994 “one radio talk show that nobody had ever heard of” broadcasted. He points to the existence today of “hundreds of radio talk show hosts all trying to outdo themselves right—going further right, and further right, and further right.”

He worries what such people would make of an outing on the links with the Golfer in Chief.

Golf Digest ranked Boehner, who played a round with Tiger Woods a few years back, as the ninth best golfer in Congress.

Maybe the Meadows effort isn't the one. But one of these days . . .

Boehner shows a little spine

Of course, the Freedom-Haters in both Congress and the regime's propaganda arm want the main message to be that he is recklessly putting post-America in jeopardy, when  the main point is that the Most Equal Comrade's executive amnesty for illegal aliens must be stopped.  And, of course, that poster boy for Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome, John McCain, has much to say about the former and nada about the latter.

 John Boehner, the Republican U.S. House of Representatives speaker, said he is willing to let funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapse as part of a Republican push to roll back President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration.

With a Feb. 27 deadline looming for funding the department, Senate Democrats three times this month blocked consideration of the Homeland Security appropriations bill, which has already been approved by the House.

"Senate Democrats are the ones standing in the way. They're the ones jeopardizing funding," Boehner told Fox News on Sunday. Asked if he was prepared to let financing for the department lapse, he said: "Certainly. The House has acted. We've done our job."

Arizona Senator John McCain, a leading Republican voice on national security matters, told NBC's "Meet the Press" of his alarm at the situation.

"The American people did not give us majority to have a fight between House and Senate Republicans," McCain said, referring to Republicans taking control of both the House and Senate after November's congressional elections. "They want things done. You cannot cut funding from the Department of Homeland Security. We need to sit down and work this thing out."

Democrats want to fund the department but oppose House amendments stripping funding from Obama's 2012 and 2014 executive orders lifting a deportation threat for millions of illegal immigrants. 

I find White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough's statement - "Unfortunately, I don't see exactly how Congress is going to be able to resolve this" - a bit unsettling. Is the implication along the lines of "By golly, the executive branch will just have to break the logjam"?

Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome is not the big sell among Pubs that it once was

To call this an encouraging poll result is to engage in understatement big-time:

Republican voters nationwide overwhelmingly want their House representative to elect somebody other than Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) as Speaker of the House, a new poll from Pat Caddell’s organization Caddell Associates shows.

A whopping 60 percent of voters who voted for Republicans in the last election either definitely or probably want their member of Congress to elect someone other than Boehner on Jan. 6, when Congress convenes, according to the poll. The voters were asked: “As you may know the new Congress will select its leaders in January. If it were up to you, would you elect John Boehner to continue as Speaker of the House or would you elect someone new?”

In response to that question, 34 percent of the GOP voters surveyed said they definitely want someone other than Boehner and 26 percent said they probably want someone other than Boehner. Only 11 percent said they definitely want to keep Boehner and an additional 15 percent said they probably want Boehner to stay. So the poll says some 60 percent of GOP voters want Boehner gone, while just 25 percent want him to stay. Fifteen percent in the poll either don’t know, or are undecided on Boehner’s future.

In addition to that condemnation of Boehner, 64 percent of the GOP voters surveyed either strongly or somewhat agree that Boehner, as Speaker of the House, has been “ineffective in opposing President Obama’s agenda.” Only 24 percent either somewhat or strongly disagree. Twelve percent didn’t know.

When asked if they “trust” Boehner to “fight for the issues that are important to most Republicans,” barely more than half of the GOP voters surveyed said they did. 

Let's come up with the 30 votes to replace him.

Replacing Boehner as Speaker is doable and imperative

As I've noted many times, those who love freedom, America and Western civilization have no shortage of enemies.  The list includes jihadists both Sunni and Shiite, Communists (BTW, did you hear that the Most Equal Comrade intends to normalize relations with Cuba?  More on that late today.) and Democrats. But, as Erick Erickson, says, it's time to speak plainly about certain figures with Rs behind their names.

House conservatives must summon the courage to oppose Boehner’s nomination on the floor in January. It is a moral imperative. You cannot consistently complain about Leadership’s many failures—and the treachery involved with a Speaker fresh off a successful wave election conspiring with President Obama to fund amnesty and enjoy a celebratory phone call in the aftermath—and then vote for him to continue in this role. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, that is the definition of insanity, and it is enabled by a vote for Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)N/A.

One of the main obstacles to unseating Boehner is that House conservatives sort of like him. You hear them say, “He really is a good guy. He just has the worst job in the world.” What they do not realize is that at all times, Boehner and the entire Leadership team are looking to screw and distract conservatives. Leadership has a phrase for this—its called “member management.” It is code to themselves for outright deception towards those they lead. Most of the time they don’t get caught, but occasionally the corruption is exposed. Boehner’s team lied to Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN)83%to get his vote on the all-important procedural “rule” setting up the debate on the cromnibus. He promised to pull the cromnibus if Stutzman voted for the rule. Stutzman gave his vote, and Boehner went back on his word.

House conservatives need to understand that they are not conspiring against a family member or team member. They are conspiring against an adversary intent on thwarting the change they came to Washington to bring. It is that simple.

Some will argue that a vote against Boehner is a mere protest vote. It is not. There are 30 House conservatives whose vote against Boehner, along with the united front of Democrats voting for Pelosi, could deny him reelection. These 30 would be exercising a veto. There would be no chance of a Democrat becoming Speaker (an obvious point but an argument sure to be advanced by some Republican), because a actual majority of the whole House of Representatives is required. Republicans would simply go back and re-nominate someone else who would not be subsequently vetoed

It's time to render the John Boehners, the Jeb Bushes, the Mitt Romneys, the John McCains and the donors and pundits who suck up to them incapable of influencing the Republican party's direction.  I guess "Tea Party" is still fairly effective shorthand for what we are, but for my money, "three-pillar conservative" sums it up.  And the disdain with which we're regarded is now proven to be pretty close to home.

Standing up to Reasonable Gentlemen yields results

Boehner and his lieutenants are beginning to feel the heat:

The GOP leadership’s plans are beginning to fall apart in the wake of a series of Breitbart News investigative pieces that show Boehner has put his top lieutenants – including Rules Committee chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) – at serious political risk from potential primary challengers. Breitbart has also reported on how Boehner and his top allies deceived the Republican conference into voting for a new version of a bill from Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) that actually provides extra legal justification for Obama’s executive amnesty, rather than fighting it, as they originally had claimed. 

While the Boehner plan is not dead yet, it is quite clear that extra grassroots pressure in the Capitol is working, as grassroots organizations push members, and as the American people light up the phone lines of their members of Congress.

The linked Breitbart piece by Matthew Boyle enumerates some of the great missionaries out there battling Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome:  Numbers USA, Eagle Forum, Heritage Action, Center for Immigration Studies, Laura Ingraham.

Tireless patriots.  Join them.  It works.

Why is it so hard for John Boehner to have some principles?

Last evening, during the panel discussion segment of FNC's Special Report program, Charles Krauthammer minimized  - really, pretty much dismissed - the notion of a intra-party rift among Pubs.  He said that if one is looking for that kind of action, it's among the Freedom-Haters, and cited Chuck Schumer's we-should-have-focused-on-the-economy-not-health-care remark as substantiation.

Parsing the biases and and social and intellectual factors that might make the great doctor so conclude might be an interesting exercise.  Right now, however, I'm more interested in trying to divine the deepest motivations of Speaker Boehner, who, in outlets which I've been checking in with all morning, has truly and undeniably brought the basic split among Pubs to the fore.

Some might say, "Never mind his deepest motivations.  That's like looking for the root causes of jihad.  You just fight him and defend freedom with maximum ferocity.  You just get a guy like him out of the way."

That it were so easy.  He holds a very powerful position, and his behavior is not some kind of outlier.  There are other House members, Senators, and out-of-office figures of prominence (Jeb "act of love" Bush and Mitt ""swallow hard" Romney) who are in his camp.

So what makes a Catholic barkeep's son from Cincinnati who helped craft the 1994 Contract With America take such a stance?  What is there in his background- the large, close-knit, German-Irish blue-collar family, his rise from sales rep to president of a plastics firm, his rise through Ohio state government - that might provide clues into why he is willing to appear to the world as being utterly devoid of principles?

Why are we here, Mr. Speaker?

Unless he gets solid support from mainstream conservatives, Boehner would need support from Democratic legislators to pass the spending bill. But passing the major spending bill — complete with tacit approval for the amnesty — with Democratic votes instead of GOP votes would be a severe repudiation of the midterm voters who recently boosted Boehner’s majority.

The Democrats’ leader in the Senate, Sen. Harry Reid, suggested Tuesday that he would support Boehner’s plan.

Alternatively, Boehner may try to improve his anti-amnesty plan to win more votes from his own GOP caucus, perhaps by adding language that prohibits the agency form spending money, including fees.

Shortly after Obama announced his amnesty, Boehner theatrically declared he would fight it “tooth and nail.”

Boehner didn’t detail his modified omnibus plan. In general, the four-month limit would block spending after March, and so allow the new GOP majorities in the House and Senate to defund the amnesty with a new spending bill, starting in April.

That plan would also allow Obama 120 days to execute his huge amnesty. The planned block on further spending would only happen if the GOP leadership really wants to defund the amnesty, legislators said.

The thing that keeps crossing my mind is the truth that executive-order amnesty can be defunded.  We've been over this before here at LITD.  The Congressional Research Service has determined that Congress can pull the plug on fee-based agencies.

Jeff Sessions gets it.    And he understands that Congressional Pubs are on the precipice of a huge betrayal of voters' trust.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) suggested that House Republicans are on the verge of breaking their campaign promise to fight President Obama’s administrative amnesty, judging by the legislative text currently being circulated.

Sessions said that the proposed language “fails to meet [the] test” established by Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who promised earlier this year that the GOP would do everything possible to thwart Obama’s executive orders.

“The executive amnesty language is substantially weaker than the language the House adopted this summer, and does not reject the central tenets of the President’s plan: work permits, Social Security and Medicare to 5 million illegal immigrants — reducing wages, jobs and benefits for Americans,” Sessions said in the statement expressing his dissatisfaction with the results of a House Republican conference meeting today.

So what goes through the head of a guy like Boehner to cause him to see it so differently from Senator Sessions?  Is it some heady concoction of big-donor backslaps, Wall Street Journal editorials and  US Chamber of Commerce position papers?  Fear of a government shutdown?

Here's how you deal with a potential dust-up over a shutdown:  Act without dilution on your principles.  Defund executive-order amnesty, strictly enforce border security and that's it.  The "millions living in the shadows" will just have to continue to do so for the time being.  Legal residents of this country aren't particularly concerned about their self-imposed plight.  It's fairly far down the list of our priorities in an age of ISIS dirty-bomb threats, $18 trillion debt, cultural rot and EPA tyranny.

So why?  Why, Mr. Speaker?   Why do you not give a flying diddly that you look like you have a fettucine noodle where your spine should be and mashed potatoes where your brain should be?  Please provide the answer, and, yes, then get out of the way and let a conservative lead the people's chamber.

No to any Iran nuke deal that doesn't pass muster with Congress

Glad to see John Boehner say this about the secret is-there-room-for-cooperation-in-the-fight-against-ISIS-and-by-the-way-can-we-get-a-nuke-deal-inked-by-the-24th? letter that the Most Equal Comrade sent to the Ayatollah Khameini:

“I don’t trust the Iranians, I don’t think we need to bring them into this,” Mr. Boehner said.

Foreign policy is another area, along with immigration, health care and the environment, where the new bunch on the Hill is going to be much less inclined to let the MEC get away with playing fast and loose.

Is Boehner using the Most Equal Comrade as a hedge against fully committing himself to amnesty for illegal aliens?

It looks that way to Neo-neocon:

What do I think Boehner really intends to do about illegal immigrants? I think he’s torn. He may buy the idea that Republicans have to do something about this—or at least appear to do something about this—in order to appeal to Hispanic votes (I disagree that it would woo their votes from the Democrats, but he’s not consulting me). He also knows that the GOP’s big-money donors seem to want immigration reform passed, and he needs to placate them to keep the money flowing. So he likes to indicate that he would really really love to pass something of the sort (see also this). But every time he says it he is careful to add an interesting caveat, to the effect that “no action is possible until President Obama proves himself a trustworthy partner to Republicans.”

Does that seem very likely to happen? That’s Boehner’s out, I think, in case he decides not to do it or in case he can’t convince enough Republicans to do it. He can then say to everyone who wanted it, “I tried, but I couldn’t succeed because Obama’s not a trustworthy partner on this.”

Would fit with my overall impression of him as yet another pol who started out with rightie principles pretty much intact and then became thoroughly Beltway-ized.

Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome is getting just as dangerous for America as out-and-out freedom-hatred

I really, really have to wonder why some federal legislators bother calling themselves Republicans.

What informs their worldview?  How the hell are they defining conservatism?

I've wondered about this Cathy McMorris Rodgers ever since she gave that milquetoast Pub response to the Most Equal Comrade's SOTU address.  Now she confirms for me, with her pronouncement that the basic framework of Freedom-Hater-care is likely here to stay and that the focus should be on "reforming the exchanges."

Then there's Boehner's address to the Middletown Rotary Club in which he mocked Pub colleagues who are against dealing with immigration policy this year.  He didn't just mention it in passing; he got quite theatrical about it.

Would it be too much to ask him to focus on pressuring the MEC, Eric Holder, Jeh Johnson et al to uniformly enforce current immigration laws?  Hasn't the speaker even glancingly considered the argument -the absolutely correct argument - that amnesty for illegal aliens would swell the rolls of FHer voters and destroy the party in which he is such a prominent figure?


It's almost pointless to bring up John McCain's latest spewing of accommodationist sludge - coming right out for amnesty and expressing a desire to see a law enshrining it named after Ted Kennedy - but it is indeed necessary because it shows just how dangerous a figure he is.

Being a writer, I'm generally curious about what motivates people and how they come by their core philosophies.   I understand the various types of people who embrace leftism fairly well, I think.  And I certainly understand those who stand for three-pillar (free markets, foreign policy based on an accurate understanding of history, Judeo-Christian morality) conservatism - because I'm one of them.

But these people who go through the bother of carving a period out of their lives to vie for the opportunity to ostensibly represent conservatives in government and then behave on the basis of a complete muddle instead of a consistent worldview still baffle me.

Maybe one has to actually be in their position, balancing the inputs from back in the district, the media, colleagues both within their party and across the aisle, and lobbying pressures to fully understand it.

But then why can some go into that milieu and remain true to what they started out claiming to be about?

I don't know if I'll come to a decent understanding of what makes those afflicted with RGS tick, but I know it's a secondary exercise to the main task at hand - defeating them.  That's every bit as important as defeating our self-proclaimed enemies, the Freedom-Haters.

The latest symptom of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome: apathy toward the nation's sovereignty

SO John Boehner tells an assemblage of "donors and industry leaders' that he is "hell-bent" on passing an immigration bill before the election.

I scrolled through the 45 comments below the linked WSJ article.  Exactly two were supportive of this. The remainder all understood that amnesty for illegal aliens would be the death of the GOP and America.

It's real, and it must be addressed

I'm all for closing ranks as we embark on this election cycle, but the fissure on the Right can't be ignored.

It's manifesting itself today in the chasm between the two right-of-center takes on what John Boehner has demonstrated about his character in this debt-ceiling-hike matter.

Jason Kissner at The American Thinker says Boehner is a fool:

Less than 24 hours after President Obama illegally rewrote the law he had previously jammed down Boehner's -- and the country's -- throat, Boehner handed the budding dictator a clean debt-ceiling hike.

Last October, Obama vindictively shut down the federal government upon his having refused to delay ObamaCare, which of course is exactly what he himself lawlessly did on February 10, 2014!

Of course, Boehner is hardly in a position to argue now, having foolishly (immensely so) accepted responsibility for the shutdown.

And a eunuch:

a country whose legislators allow the executive to usurp their power and defy the law of the people is, sooner or later, doomed -- because under such circumstances, monstrosities even greater than ObamaCare are all but certain to follow.Of course, Boehner does not have the constitution for any of this.  Whether it's to do with race, government shutdowns, the nature and scope of executive power, or anything else really--eunuchs like Boehner allow the Democrats to dictate the terms of the debate -- which means battles are lost before they are even "engaged."

Peter Wehner at Commentary thinks it is those with Kissner's viewpoint (and, of course, that of Ted Cruz, Jim DeMint et al)  who are the fools:

So some of the same people who recommended the GOP embrace the strategy that produced the government shutdown were insisting that House Republicans should have forced a showdown on raising the debt ceiling. One political disaster in a half year apparently isn’t enough. Why not two?

It is a curious thing, those who insist on fighting losing battles, on large stages, based on wholly unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved. For some politicians seeking to curry favor with some part of the GOP base, the motivations may be ambition and self-interest. But there are others who seem to believe going down in flames is a high calling and a purifying ritual. Every tactical difference is framed as an apocalyptic struggle. The choice is liberty or tyranny. You’re a “constitutional conservative” or a statist. It’s the American Revolution all over again. You, too, can be Patrick Henry.

Now John Boehner is hardly an inspiring, let alone a perfect, political figure. He hardly sets conservative hearts aflutter. If there are those on the right who think another person should be speaker of the House, fine; they’re free to make their case and coalesce behind a challenger. But this should be said as well: Mr. Boehner’s job is more challenging than fulminating from deep in the bowels of a hidden bunker for three hours every weeknight. And whatever his limitations, Mr. Boehner has the virtue of being a serious adult who isn’t intemperate, who’s not in a constant state of agitation, and who hasn’t lost touch with political reality. Which is more than can be said about some of his critics.

So there you have it.  

Wehner likes his Republican leaders to have Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome in as advanced a stage as possible.  He speaks admiringly of the fact that Boehner is "not in a constant state of agitation."  You'd think being treated with contempt every time he tries for a deal with the MEC would at least agitate the Speaker occasionally.

Wehner trots our the old sawhorse "political reality."  Is it really beyond the scope of political reality to make use of the fact that the MEC has changed the ground rules?  All this executive decree business makes for a different moral atmosphere.  Boehner doesn't have to accord the MEC the respect he may have thought he had to even a few months ago.  We're dealing with an outlaw, a caudillo, in the MEC.  You point up the fact that he's delaying FHer-care and doing so by fiat.  At least our Tea Party heroes tried to round up legislative votes for it.

LITD sides with the viewpoint that Boehner woefully underutilized this moment.  At some point, somebody has to speak plainly about the extreme nature of our present circumstance.

Signing on without being absolutely certain

Boehner announces his support for the MEC's intent to fire a "shot across the bow" in Syria.

He's willing to jump on that bandwagon despite credible and growing substantiation that it was anti-Assad forces that staged the chemical-weapon attack.

Let's proceed carefully here.  The last thing we need is entanglement in another Mideast war based on mistaken intelligence.  Especially in a case where there seems to be no direct US national security interest.

I tried; I really tried . . .

. . . to find some substantive evidence that John Boehner didn't have a fatal case of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome.  But the SOB is plumb ate up with it.  Says he "absolutely trusts" the Most Equal Comrade and has a great relationship with him.

John Boehner squanders yet another chance to convey our message

He uses the highly valuable lines of a Wall Street Journal column to give low-information voters the impression that he agrees with the Most Equal Comrade that the sequester must be avoided.  Um, John, how about using the first couple of paragraphs to call the MEC's bluff, and tell the nation that this is all about seizing yet more of Americans' money at gunpoint?  And use the rest of the piece to offer up some real proposals, the kind that the MEC wouldn't like at all?

I get so tired of this "the-president-needs-to-lead" crud we hear so frequently from Boehner.  The "president" needs to take a flying leap.  He needs to be rendered irrelevant.  Hell, doing that to us is his top priority.