That whine you hear is Speaker John Boehner.
Boehner (R-OH) pivoted his blame game Tuesday, from his mocking “This is too hard!” cry last week, in which he correctly blamed his own party for their failure to pass immigration reform, to today’s new scapegoat for GOP failures. Yep, you guessed it. It’s all President Obama’s fault.
Watch here:
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http://youtu.be/HUDqCTlvm9k
Asked if he regretted mocking his own party, Boehenr pretended he didn’t actually mean what he said last week, “Whoa, well, there was no mocking. You all know me. You know. Ya tease the ones you love. Right, but some people misunderstood what I had to say and I wanted to make sure the members understood that the biggest impediment we have in moving immigration reform is that the American people don’t trust the President to enforce or implement the law, uh, that we may or may not pass. I’ve said it here, it’s the truth, and our members know it’s the truth.”
So, just to be clear: Boehner is not responsible for how anyone took his words, or for the Waiting for Godot essence of the GOP’s non-existent immigration reform bill. He’s being misunderstood, that’s all.
According to Boehner, it’s all President Obama’s fault that the House Republicans can’t even agree on something they could pretend to put up for a vote and then run and hide from their own bill, as is their pattern when pushed to pretend they are a legislative body.
The Democrats pounced on Boehner’s cry last week, and came up with a video version of “Don’t Make Me Do This!” that pits Boehner against Cantor.
Watch here to understand why the Speaker is backpedaling today:
Speaker Boehner let a little truth bomb out last week when he said of his own party, “Here’s the attitude. ‘Oh, don’t make me do this. Oh, this is too hard.’ We get elected to make choices. We get elected to solve problems. And it’s remarkable to me how many of my colleagues just don’t want to.”
Boehner has admitted that he can’t pass anything in his House of Horrors without help from the Democrats and specifically, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He admitted in February that he simply doesn’t have the votes to pass things. The truth is that even though his party is the majority, he’s caught in the middle between the Tea Party and the establishment Republicans, and since he won’t take a stance, he’s left pointing his fingers and blaming the President when he can’t get the votes — which is pretty much always.
In truth, the President enforces plenty of laws that Republicans don’t like or agree with, and as for Obamacare, the President also has the authority to direct changes in implementation of a policy. All presidents do it, but naturally, when Obama does it, he’s “violating the law” and this is why Speaker Boehner can’t do his job in the House. In a predictable bit of irony given the amount of projection the modern day Republican must engage in just to get through the day, it is Republicans who have been urging at every turn for people to not follow the law. They have refused to help educate people about the law, and at their all too common lowest, they urge insurrection and anarchy over laws like Obamacare and paying taxes and/or fees to the federal government. (Cliven Bundy would be the perfect GOP House mascot.)
Don’t make me do this, indeed. No worries, no one can make the Speaker and his Do-Nothingist Caucus do anything.
The one thing House Republicans do super well is kill their own almost-drafted bills while blaming the President for their dysfunction. As inaccurate and untrue as Boehner’s argument is, what makes it politically unworkable is the fact that it’s weak. All Boehner seems to do is flail around crying about what woulda been, if only. Republicans are unable to even draft an immigration reform policy because… WAAAA, Obama!
One thing House Republicans don’t ever do is take personal responsibility for their failures to legislate; aka, their main job, for which they are well paid by the American people. For this reason, Speaker Boehner also spent his presser blaming Obama for the Republicans refusal to pass any of his jobs bills, and pretended once again that the Keystone Pipeline was a “jobs bill”.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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