Things are not going well for Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).
After threatening to sue President Obama but failing to provide cause, the Speaker refused to use his brain when the President told him to please proceed. Instead of taking a moment to examine the floor littered with Republican foes who were hoisted on their own right wing conspiracy petard, Boehner pressed on.
This past weekend, the Speaker even wrote an op-ed about his lawsuit desperate attempt to woo the frothing, crazed GOP tea base, in which he also failed to mention one actual example of the President breaking the law.
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His op-ed was not well received by said frothing base. It was such a fail that when White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Shultz was asked to respond to the Speaker’s op-ed, he tweeted that he should have sent reporters to read a rebuttal written by the ever-angry Erick Erickson:
I had a bunch of reporters ask me for response to Boehner op-ed this weekend. Guess I should have sent them here: http://t.co/5C3L6FFnaM
— Eric Schultz (@Schultz44) July 7, 2014
When conservative Erick Erickson is calling you out and he has a point, you are pretty cooked.
Erickson’s diatribe begins thusly with a quote from his closing, “John Boehner and the House Republicans may lack the testicular fortitude to fight President Obama, but I would kindly ask that he save the taxpayers further money on a political stunt…”
Oh. Those are President Obama’s words. I am referring to political “stunt”, not “testicular fortitude”, of course. (However, a staunch belief in the lack of Boehner’s “testicular fortitude” could be implied by daring the bumbling Republican to sue him.)
Erickson tells Boehner and his clown posse to “man up”. Instead of running to the courts to act as “mama” to the Speaker, Erickson wants Boehner to commit political suicide for the GOP. You see, nothing else will appease the jihadist GOP base except cutting off the government. Oh, yes… It’s come to this.
John Boehner having to run home and cry to mama, i.e. let the courts act as the parent in the squabble, is chiefly a failure of House Republicans to use their “most complete and effectual weapon” against the Senate and President.
It is Republicans in the House and Senate who orchestrated giving Barack Obama a blank check to raise the debt ceiling through March of 2015. It is Republicans in the House and Senate who were so scared of a government shutdown, that they threw Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee under the bus before the President even initiated a government shut down.
Maybe no one has noticed yet, but Erick Erickson — the extreme right wing — just used President Obama’s words to take down Republican John Boehner for failing to be extremist enough. How do you know when your party is failing? When your base meets the opposition in frothing rage, you are pretty much failing.
Oddly, this is sort of what happened for Democrats in the lead up to the disastrous 2010 elections with the far left working with the Tea Party to destroy healthcare reform because it wasn’t enough. So in Erickson’s piece, he correctly pointed out that this was a stunt designed to get out the vote, “I would kindly ask that he save the taxpayers further money on a political stunt solely designed to incite Republican voters who might otherwise stay home…”
To add insult to injury for Boehner, his stunt is not only a complete failure but Democrats raised a lot of money off of it. If this keeps up, 2014 may not look like the pundits keep saying it will.
On June 27th, I noted that the President sounded as if he were firing a warning shot to Boehner. Some people never listen.
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