Speaker of the House John Boehner has responded to the Republican threat to overthrow him by deciding to resign from Congress.
Speaker John A. Boehner will resign from Congress and give up his House seat at the end of October, according to aides in his office.
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Mr. Boehner was under extreme pressure from the right wing of his conference over whether or not to defund Planned Parenthood in a bill to keep the government open.
It turns out all of those coup threats against Boehner were true. When Democrats made it clear that they were not going to save the Speaker from the attempt to overthrow him, Boehner had no way out of the mess that he had gotten himself into.
Speaker Boehner was in a no win situation. Either he kept the government open and lost his job, or he shut the government down and still faced a coup unless he defunded Planned Parenthood.
Boehner is saying that this was a planned resignation, but he stuck around longer after Eric Cantor lost his primary. Speaker Boehner was going to struggle to keep his job no matter what he did.
The only surprise in this story is the when. It is shocking that Boehner would walk away now, but the decision frees him to keep the government open with no consequences. Boehner was going to be gone anyway. The advantage to his decision is that he gets to leave on his own terms.l
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
