Placido Salazar

psalazar9@satx.rr.com
WE MUST GET THE VOTE OUT!!!
PLAIN AND SIMPLE, OR LIVE TO REGRET IT, even worse. REGISTER AND VOTE.
Placido Salazar

DAILY KOS
Sat Sep 26, 2015 at 01:48 PM PDT

The Dark Truth Of John Boehner's Resignation

by RETIIIFollow

568 Comments / 568 New

This is something that should not slip by lightly. The video above is of a roomful of
Republican voters interrupting the speech of a Republican Senator and presidential
candidate with a standing ovation at the news that the Republican House Speaker has been
forced to resign. It is hard to watch this outburst of joyful anger (or angry joy?) without
wondering: what in the world is going on with the Republican party? Why would news
of the humiliating resignation of John Boehner spark an immediate Republican celebration?
Mr. Boehner certainly was unpopular with his own Republican voters. The day of his
resignation a WSJ/NBC poll found that "some 72% of Republican primary voters said they
were dissatisfied with the ability of Mr. Boehner and GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell to
achieve Republican goals." But that phrase - failure "to achieve Republican goals" - is
remarkable. As a very good "Abbreviated Pundit Round-up" details today, John Boehner
and the Republicans overall never had the votes to impose Republican policies. As Phillip
Bump notes, the only "compromises" Boehner made "have been between reality and
fantasy."
Indeed, it is notable that when conservative writer Erick Erickson writes a column titled
"Why John Boehner Had To Go," he can't actually name or describe anything Boehner
did wrong - only arguing vaguely and nonsensically that Boehner (somehow) held his own
Republican party "in contempt."
When forced to explain this supposed "contempt," numerous Republicans (even presidential
candidates) list not only Boehner's (non-existent) failure to stop Obamacare, but also his
supposed enabling of Obamacare. As Mike Huckabee explained, "When people sent

[Republicans] here, they didn't send them to give the president more power on
Obamacare[.]" Think about that: after total legislative obstruction, a government shutdown, more than 50 votes to repeal Obamacare, an ensuing presidential election, two
Supreme Court lawsuits, and other pending litigation - - Republicans are livid with the belief
that John Boehner has worked with the President to strengthen Obamacare.
No sane political observer could think that. So, what gives? As Jonathan Chait explains,
we are witnessing a sort of collective Republican denial where they cannot accept that they
are not the ruling party, not the "deciders" (to use a former president's phrase):
To understand the pressures that brought about Boehners demise as an ideological split
badly misconstrues the situation. The small band of right-wing noisemakers in the House
who made Boehners existence a living hell could not identify any important substantive
disagreements with the object of their wrath. . . . The source of the disagreement was
tactical, not philosophical. Boehners tormentors refused to accept the limits of his political
power. . . .
This discontent runs much deeper and wider than Boehner. . . . Boehner had the misfortune
of leading, or attempting to lead, his party in an era when it had run up to the limits of
crazy, where the only unexplored frontiers of extremism lay beyond the reach of its
Constitutional powers.
What is important here is not that Republicans object to the limits of their power, but that
Republicans apparently cannot accept that such limits even exist. Greg Sargent recently
caught this in a very revealing FOX News poll:
[Republicans] failed to block Obamas transformation of the country; that must be because
they didnt even try, so they must be complicit. But this failure, too, is structural.
Republicans dont have the votes to surmount Dem filibusters or Obama vetoes. The idea
that this can be overcome through sheer force of will (the argument conservatives are
making in favor of another shutdown fight) is just another version of [the "Big Lie"].
Indeed, the Fox News poll unwittingly captures what is particularly problematic about this
last one. It finds that 60 percent of Republicans feel betrayed by their party, and that 66
percent of Republicans dont think their party did all it could to block Obamas agenda. The
poll asks why respondents think their party leaders failed at this: they didnt really want to
stop Obama; they werent smart enough; they would rather fight each other. The Fox poll
doesnt even offer respondents the option of choosing the real reason that
Republicans structurally lack the votes!
You see? Lack of majority political power is not even a possibility. When, in the video above,
Republican supporters jumped from their chairs at news of Boehner's resignation, it is
because someone or something defective had to be blocking the Republicans' exercise of
their undisputed authority. With Boehner gone, Republicans have something legitimate to
celebrate in their minds - the restoration of their thwarted authority.
It sounds crazy, I know, but this represents the true "dark side" of Boehner's resignation: it
is another significant step in the Republican party's shocking withdrawal from our
system of democratic governance. Specifically, it presages a doubling-down of the
Republicans' intentions to assert "negative control," where government shutdowns,
hostage-taking, and (the immensely dangerous) debt-ceiling fights threaten to become
more determinative than electoral outcomes and a functioning government. As one
Republican writer put it, the emerging Republican belief is that threats of government
destruction combined with the inherent rightness of Republican beliefs "could be so strong
(as Ted Cruz was of his proposal to defund Obamacare) that Senate Democrats, the Obama
White House and the mainstream media would, for once, finally, this time, cave in and let

the House Republicans have their way." (And the use of the words "for once, finally" means
"rightly," "appropriately," consistent with the "true" distribution of power.)
If anyone doubts that this is where we are increasingly headed, Steve Benen has a useful
summary of the growing history of Republicans' "hostage governing":
* April 2011: House Republicans threaten a government shutdown unless Democrats accept
GOP demands on spending cuts.
* July 2011: Republicans create the first-ever debt-ceiling crisis, threatening to default on
the nations debts unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts.
* September 2011: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* April 2012: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* December 2012: Republicans spend months refusing to negotiate in the lead up to the socalled fiscal cliff.
* January 2013: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.
* September 2013: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* October 2013: Republicans actually shut down the government.
* February 2014: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.
* December 2014: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* February 2015: Republicans threaten a Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
* September 2015: Republicans threaten another shutdown [over Planned Parenthood].
As Jonathan Chait, Greg Sargent and others note, the forced resignation of John Boehner is
another step in the above line of this undemocratic behavior, and not some gossipy, intramural Republican politics.
What we have here is one of two major political parties increasingly disengaging from the
democratic process. Did you know that President Obama is an illegitimate President because
he is not a "natural born citizen"? Or that he won election by promising "free stuff" to
minorities? That minorities and illegal aliens are engaged in massive voter fraud? Or, that
popular elections of U.S. Senators should be taken away? That some "Boehner Rule" or
"Hastert Rule" exists which neuters any Democratic House votes? Or that is OK for
Republicans to filibuster every proposed law while in the minority, but the filibuster should
be repealed now that Republicans have a Senate majority? Or that the Electoral College
should be reformed to provide proportional votes only in "Blue States"? . . . or, that policy
outcomes should not be determined by elections but instead by holding hostage the federal
government or the "full faith and credit" of the U.S.?
Most importantly, did you realize that all of the above are necessary to enact the majority
will of the people? Because - believe it or not - that is what the Republicans believe.
The conclusion of Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein has been
widely quoted, but not sufficiently absorbed:

One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier
ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime;
scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and
science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.