| Thursday, John Boehner cried uncle. Okay, he didn't cry, although it actually would have been appropriate. Notice that what he did do was to set up a floor voice vote where the tax holiday would pass unless someone objected. It was scheduled for Friday morning, meaning that between the time time of the announcement and the actual procedure there was scant time for people to take commercial flights back to DC. That fact is important because had he scheduled a regular vote, there would have been a lot of trouble for him from the tea bag contingent. Boehner is an interesting Speaker in that he has refused to rule the caucus with the normal iron glove common to the other Speakers. Historically the way the House works is that when a big bill is going to come out of committee, the Speaker decides when and how it will come to floor. In the case of major legislation there's whipping and horse trading. The Speaker, in concert with his whips, the rest of the leadership of his party, and the President if the President is of the same party whip party members into voting for the legislation. They do this in one of two ways, which is strongly correlated to where pork comes from. Members who balked were either offered a pork-carrot, as in "you'll get X if you vote for Y" or offered a pork-stick, as in "we'll take Z from you if you don't vote for Y". "X" and "Z" normally showed up as amendments, or missing amendments to the legislation in question, or some other piece of legislation. When Boehner became Speaker, he was faced with a freshmen class of tea bag irregulars who neither understood how the House worked nor had any interest in pork for their districts. In point of fact, they didn't care AT ALL about their districts nor their constituents. (They still don't.) He could have tried to be an actual leader, but instead he chose to try to be a consensus builder which has led to the single most ineffectual House in American history. He'll pay a price for that: certainly he will be challenged in formal ways. And in the interim, it will be a continuation of the status quo where he cannot negotiate in good faith with the Senate nor the White House because he holds no sway over his caucus, and refuses to align with the Democrats. Think about it: Boehner has put "getting along with the tea baggers" above passing legislation that over the past year could have passed with Democratic votes, and only a few Republicans (24 if the Democratic caucus held) crossing the aisle. It would have been action over inaction. He would have been a true consensus builder - could have been a legitimate bipartisan leader. And getting 24 Republicans to vote for something moderate would have been easier than trying to get the 66 member of the official teabag caucus to agree to anything. John figured wrong: he misunderstood that the teabaggers were committed to holding government hostage, and keeping it from doing anything other than protecting gun rights and decimating civil rights. Tea bag rebellion 2011. The first shot fired in the next Republican Rebellion will take place a week from Tuesday in Iowa. And the whole primary season just became more of a quagmire with the only for sure Republicans on the Virginia ballot being Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. Newt (who LIVES in Virginia) got his signatures in, but may well not make the numbers since they're county based. Everyone else either didn't make the numbers, or didn't submit petitions. We'll see how everyone does with sign-up procedures in other primary states over time. It's like the lottery, kids, you gotta play to win. Donald Trump won't be turning in any Republican petitions, he's officially left the Republican Party, likely to try to mount a one or two week third party candidacy. If Ron Paul does well in the early primaries, but then slows down as more and more information about his newsletters comes out over time, look for him to launch a far more plausible third party run. The Republican Rebellions are all leading to the same thing: whatever the Republican Party is, and stands for, is undergoing the internecine warfare we predicted in 2009. Welcome to the 2012 Republican watershed. It's been building for a few years now: that right wing wacko contingent that is so very racist that their only concern is shutting down the government because it's run by a guy who is half-black. We'll see how they come out the other end, but it doesn't look pretty. And yes, I'm smiling....while there is a cell of sadness because Lincoln was a great man, and he was the first Republican president, times have changed, and it's time for them to either go back to being the party of fiscal responsibility (that would be pre-Reagan) and oblivious to social issues, or be relegated to third tier status, kinda sorta like the American Constitution Party, which is exactly where lots of them belong anyway. |
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