Boehner a personable, partisan speaker-in-waiting<snip>
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101020/ap_on_el_ho/us_boehner_profile/printBy NANCY BENAC, Associated Press Writer
2 hrs 30 mins ago
WASHINGTON – The new GOP congressmen first posed in cowboy outfits. That looked silly so they switched to shirt sleeves and ties. "The Gang of Seven," reads the caption on their old, bold poster. "We're changing Congress. Join the fight."
Nearly two decades later, 60-year-old John Boehner, the sole remaining House member from those upstart freshmen, is poised to claim victory: If Republicans win control in the Nov. 2 elections, he is expected to become the chamber's suavely dressed, Camel-smoking, golf-loving, bronze-tanned speaker.
Boehner, now the House minority leader, was little known outside his home district until President Barack Obama began holding him out as the personification of backward and elitist Republican policies. In return, Boehner is drawing heavily on his blue-collar upbringing as he travels the country offering the GOP counterpoint to Obama's campaign pitch.
In this duel of definitions, Boehner, one of 12 children of a working-class family in Ohio, tells of mopping the floors in his father's bar at age 10, of the skills required to deal with all the characters who walked in the door of Andy's Cafe, of toughing it out in night school while turning around a failing small business.
"If there's one thing I hope you learn about me, it's that I'm a regular guy," Boehner tells one audience.
"I've got two brothers that are unemployed; I've got two brother-in-laws that are unemployed," Boehner tells a TV interviewer. "I understand what's going on out in America."
"I've had every rotten job there ever was, but I gotta tell you I was grateful to have every single one of them," Boehner says in a speech.
It's all meant to counter the "G-T-L" refrain of Boehner's critics, who try to keep the focus on just three things: Boehner's love of golf, his head-turning tan and his close ties to lobbyists. The three all feed into Democrats' characterizations of Boehner as a country club Republican who's looking out only for corporate bigwigs.
"It tells a story about where his priorities are," says Justin Coussoule, his longshot Democratic challenger in Ohio's 8th district, which runs along the Indiana border and takes in suburbs of Cincinnati and parts of Dayton.
___
Boehner, pronounced BAY-nur, took the first steps on his long climb up the leadership ladder not long after his election to the Democratic-controlled House in 1990. Angry and embarrassed by revelations that legislators had been routinely allowed to overdraw their House bank accounts, Boehner and six other Republican freshmen commiserated in the back of the House chamber over what they saw as the GOP's get-along, go-along leadership and its limp response to the check-bouncing scandal.
Soon they were getting together for pizza and beer and plotting a minor revolt.
"We were ready to chew some red meat," recalls former Rep. and Sen. Rick Santorum, a member of the Gang of Seven. "John was more, 'OK, boys, let's take a step back, figure out a game plan. They'll chew you up and spit you out if you don't.'"
The seven played it right, stoking public anger and using it as a cudgel to shut down the House bank and press for broader changes. Even then, Boehner was angling for a leadership position and honing the qualities that would take him there: a calm and approachable manner, an insistence on strategic planning, a refusal to give up.
"He never gets too high when things are going well and he doesn't get too low when things are not going so well," says Rep. Steve LaTourette, a fellow Ohio Republican. (Boehner does cry, though. He's known to choke up over school kids and bank bailouts.)
Former aide Terry Holt remembers a day when he and another aide had grabbed one another's lapels in a hallway shouting match, and Boehner walked by.
"He didn't even slow down," Holt says. "He just said, 'All right boys, come on, let's go to staff meeting.'"
Boehner's life is writ large with turning points when he found opportunity in misfortune — his own, and that of others.
When his partner at Nucite Sales, a marketing firm for plastics and other small manufacturers, died, Boehner took charge of the struggling enterprise and turned it into a moneymaker that eventually earned him millions.
When an Ohio congressman got caught in a sex scandal, then-state Rep. Boehner snatched away his seat in the U.S. House.
When Boehner finally got — and then lost — a GOP leadership position in the House, he didn't sulk. He hunkered down and proved himself an effective committee chairman.
"It was awful, but I was never going to let the bastards see me sweat," Boehner later said of being ousted from his leadership post after the GOP election losses in 1998. "I just smiled and went to work."
Eight years later, when Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted on charges of political money laundering, Boehner staged a comeback and then some, outmaneuvering two other challengers to replace him.
"I feel like the dog who caught the car," said Boehner, flashing a grin.
___
Now, Boehner is hoping that an unfortunate election year for Obama and the Democrats will be his ticket to the speaker's chair in Congress.
As he makes the case for the Republican agenda of cutting taxes, repealing Obama's health care overhaul and shrinking government, Boehner also is making the case for himself — without providing much detail about his agenda should he become speaker.
His mission is twofold: demonstrate to fellow Republicans that he's got the goods to lead as speaker — and stave off a challenge to his leadership if GOP election gains don't live up to sky-high expectations.
He often recites a refrain that is reminiscent of the best-selling book "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten."
Says Boehner: "All the skills I learned growing up are the skills I need to do my job."
</snip>
The fact that the Corporate Media continues to fail to report that it was Boehner and the very same Republicans who destroyed this economy who are being shuffled right back into power.
It's sickening. Disgusting!!! :puke::puke:
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