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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumStop pitying Boehner!: He’s not just some well-meaning victim
Look at his career and record: The Speaker has long played with fire by playing to the worst of the Republican base
BY MUGAMBI JOUET
How much blame does John Boehner deserve for the shutdown of the federal government? A common narrative in recent months has been that he is a weak Speaker who has failed to rein in hard-line Republican House members, especially in the Tea Partys ranks. Radical Congressmen make uncompromising ideological demands, the narrative goes, thereby forcing Boehner to take inflexible stances he does not really believe in, including the government shutdown. What most commentators tend to overlook is that Boehner himself has helped foment the radicalism of the modern Republican Party.
For years, he has made fiery declarations promoting the visceral animosity of numerous Republicans to the Obama administration. Your government is disrespecting you, your family, your job, your children, Boehner illustratively said in a 2010 speech, a year before he became Speaker of the House. Your government is out of control. Do you have to accept it? Do you have to take it? Boehner answered his own question: Hell no, you dont!
Before the passage of the Obama administrations health care reform in 2010, Boehner likened the law to Armageddon, the Biblical apocalypse, and said it was a monstrosity that would ruin America. Interviewed on 60 Minutes, he was literally moved to tears when explaining his desire that children continue to have a shot at the American Dream despite the menace posed by Obamas policies (see the 6 min. mark of this video). Still in 2010, the year the GOP took back the House, Boehner warned that we will not compromise on our principles. He even explicitly noted that he rejects the word compromise.
Some commentators argue that Boehner has just been pandering to the Tea Party, yet this point overlooks how he already took hard-line stances well before the Tea Party movement came into existence. Back in the 1990s, he led a drive to abolish the Department of Education and helped Newt Gingrich craft the Contract With America.
full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/07/stop_pitying_boehner_he%E2%80%99s_not_just_some_well_meaning_victim/
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Stop pitying Boehner!: He’s not just some well-meaning victim (Original Post)
DonViejo
Oct 2013
OP
Those pointing this out aren't saying he's weak so that others pity him. It's just important to know
stevenleser
Oct 2013
#3
I've arguing that he is doing what he thinks is right and that the teabaggers do not control him.
AlinPA
Oct 2013
#4
samsingh
(17,601 posts)1. he deserves a lot of blame
Democrats deserve NO blame.
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,437 posts)2. We are all now in a mess of HIS own making
I have no sympathy for him at all!
ailsagirl
(22,899 posts)8. Ditto the sentiment and the violin
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)3. Those pointing this out aren't saying he's weak so that others pity him. It's just important to know
to understand what is happening and how to address it. Pity him? No way.
AlinPA
(15,071 posts)4. I've arguing that he is doing what he thinks is right and that the teabaggers do not control him.
He is the main teabagger in this shutdown and debt default threat.
sinkingfeeling
(51,473 posts)5. He is a coward. He knows if a clean CR vote passed, the Tea Baggers will
immediately oust him as Speaker. He's so afraid of losing his title and 'power' that he'll continue to screw the USA.
kairos12
(12,872 posts)7. Tis the size of things, me thinks.
WI_DEM
(33,497 posts)6. He is a truly bad Speaker of the House. Has no discipline or control over his caucus
D23MIURG23
(2,850 posts)9. I never have.
Fuck Boner. Worst Oompa Loompa evar.