Either Boehner is confused or he thinks you're confused

[ProSense]

Either Boehner is confused or he thinks you're confused

By Steve Benen

Watching House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on "Meet the Press" yesterday, it was hard not to wonder about the Republican leader's frame of mind. Given the distance between reality and his rhetoric, one question hung over the interview: does Boehner actually believe his own talking points?

For example, the Speaker insisted, &quot T)here's no plan from Senate Democrats or the White House to replace the sequester." Host David Gregory explained that the claim is "just not true," leading Boehner to respond:

"Well, David that's just nonsense. If [President Obama] had a plan, why wouldn't Senate Democrats go ahead and pass it?"

Now, I suppose it's possible that the Speaker of the House doesn't know what a Senate filibuster is, but Boehner has been in Congress for two decades, and I find it implausible that he could be this ignorant. The facts are not in dispute: Democrats unveiled a compromise measure that required concessions from both sides; the plan enjoyed majority support in the Senate; and Republicans filibustered the proposal. That's not opinion; that's just what happened.

"If he had a plan, why wouldn't Senate Democrats go ahead and pass it?" One of two things are true: either the House Speaker has forgotten how a bill becomes a law in 2013 or he's using deliberately deceptive rhetoric in the hopes that Americans won't know the difference. It's one or the other.

What's worse, the "dunce vs. deceiver" debate intensified as the interview progressed.

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http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/04/17179278-either-boehner-is-confused-or-he-thinks-youre-confused

[spanone]

1. not confused, contrary. impossibly partisan.

[Scuba]

2. "... does Boehner actually believe his own talking points?" That would be a "no".

[pampango]

3. I agree with regards to Boehner. There are many republicans, however, who do tend to beleive

their own talking points. They hear the same bad ideas, irrational policies and stupid opinions bounced back and forth between FOX News, Rush, conservative "think tanks" and the rest of the right-wing commentariat and come to believe these talking points. I think many of them were genuinely surprised that Obama won the election handily when every 'news' source they listen to told them that Romney was going to win in a cakewalk.

I agree that Boehner does not believe them himself. His problem is that he has proven that he cannot sell any 'compromise' to his tea-party-led members in the House republican party, so he has to play the tough guy who is not going to negotiate. I think he knows that the polls show that his party is getting most of the blame for the sequestration and will likely continue to suffer at the polls as a result. He also knows that the tea party types in his party don't care about the polls and don't care about losing elections because of it. They are 'true believers.'