Scheiber: The Inevitable Failure of Boehner's Hail Mary Means It's Over for Republicans

[highplainsdem]

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115204/government-shutdown-2013-collapse-boehner-plan-ends-stalemate

On Monday I wrote that the shutdown/default-threat/Republican extortion plot was essentially over—it was just a matter of Harry Reid and his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, hammering out the final details of a deal whose contours were coming into focus. Once they’d reached a deal, it would pass the Senate with a fair amount of bipartisan support. After which John Boehner would tearfully bring it to the floor of the House in defiance of the so-called Hastert Rule (requiring a majority of House Republicans to support a bill before it can come to a vote), possibly with some minor face-saving alteration that the Senate signaled it could accept.

Regrettably, I was wrong. As it happens, Reid and McConnell came very close to inking a deal Monday night, but then McConnell suspended their negotiations on Tuesday to give Boehner a chance at passing a bill, which promptly collapsed under the weight of his own ineptitude and your basic garden-variety House Republican lunacy, at which point Reid and McConnell resumed their negotiation over a deal that will soon pass the Senate and force Boehner’s hand. Which is to say, I missed the all-important “let’s briefly pause so Boehner can flail helplessly while the entire world looks on in horror before we officially end this thing” step in the process.

In retrospect, I’m not sure how I overlooked it. That final pathetic lurch is a tradition Boehner inaugurated during the fiscal cliff negotiation last December (recall “Plan B,” which Boehner also chose to euthanize before it came to a vote in the House). There was every reason to believe he’d observe that same sacrament this time around.

But don’t mistake it for anything other than what it was: the final spasm of a still-fresh corpse, the corpse being the GOP’s legitimacy as a political entity, to say nothing of its negotiating position in this particular conflict. If Boehner had actually had the votes to pass a bill that reopened the government and raised the debt ceiling while enacting a few modest Republican priorities—which is to say, a bill that would have been taken seriously inside Washington and put Democrats in something of a bind—he would have done it days ago, in time to give himself some actual leverage. As Boehner told his caucus, you’d “rather throw a grenade than catch a grenade.” But he didn’t have the votes. With his conservative members still lingering in a different dimension, and their peasant army of activists and moneymen declaring anything short of death to Obamacare a capitulation, it was utterly hopeless. Boehner, as is his wont, simply unpinned a grenade he knew he didn’t have the arm-strength to throw.

In the end, I’m rather relieved that this all happened Tuesday—still relatively early in the process as these things go. A few savvy congressional reporters lamented that we’d lost an entire day while Boehner took a final lap around the mental institution he runs, possibly pushing the resolution of the showdown beyond Thursday. But if you size up the situation from a bit of a distance, you see that Boehner’s final farcical move almost certainly sped things up. Given that the House GOP almost always lurches away from the eventual solution at least once before swallowing its pride and allowing it to pass, far better to get it out of their system Tuesday rather than waiting till Thursday night, with only a few hours to go before D-Day.

-snip-

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. The absolute insanity of the House GOP is breath-taking

It is a spectacle for the ages. If you try to describe this set of shitheads 20 years hence nobody would believe you. They're morons and worse: intransigent morons. It's really quite stunning.

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. "Boehner took a final lap around the mental institution he runs"

Priceless (and true!)

[DevonRex]

3. LOL, I love this part. He talks about the tea party caucus' alternate reality.

'With his conservative members still lingering in a different dimension, their peasant army of activists and moneymen declaring anything short of death to Obamacare a capitulation, it was utterly hopeless. Boehner, as is his wont, simply unpinned a grenade he knew he didn’t have the arm-strength to throw.'

[freshwest]

4. +1

Hope all is well with you, DR.

[DevonRex]

7. Oh, I've been much better.

But thanks for asking.

[LVdem]

5. Agreed... brilliant wordplay! nt

[DevonRex]

8. The last bit reminded me of the coyote blowing himself up

all the time in those old Roadrunner cartoons.

And the tea party caucus is past time for being picked up by their mother ship.

[winter is coming]

6. Let's write the retrospectives after it's definitely over.

It wouldn't surprise me to see some new outbreak of batshit craziness tomorrow.

[calimary]

10. A good thing to remember.

We don't have this won yet.

[Warpy]

11. Yes, if there are enough fanatics in that party

or enough pressure is brought against them by the fascists, then they could still ruin us financially.

That really would be the end of them, I hope. I just hope they are shouted down by the ones who still have at least a tenuous grip on reality--and fat portfolios heavily invested in hedge funds and other financials.

[Coyotl]

9. "Boehner, as is his wont, simply unpinned a grenade he knew he didn’t have the arm-strength to throw

[Cha]

13. I know.. that cracked me up too

[Cha]

12. Noam Scheiber is a smart funny guy... I hope he's got this down..

"With his conservative members still lingering in a different dimension, and their peasant army of activists and moneymen declaring anything short of death to Obamacare a capitulation, it was utterly hopeless. Boehner, as is his wont, simply unpinned a grenade he knew he didn’t have the arm-strength to throw." LOL

thank you, hpd