Statistikhengst
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #1
The rolling disaster of John Boehner 8217 s speakership - The Washington Post
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Republicans may be defending this stuff now, but in a number of months, I bet they will not.
John Boehner (R-OH) is an absolute disaster as Speaker of the HOR.
The first is the possibility of a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security if Congress canāt pass a bill to fund the department. At a moment when the news is being dominated by terrorism, both in the Middle East and in Europe, a shutdown would be a PR disaster for the GOP (even if, in reality, the key functions of the department would continue with little interruption). The House passed a bill to fund the department, including a provision revoking President Obamaās executive actions on immigration. Everyone knows that such a bill is going nowhere ā it failed to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate, and even if it had, Obama has made clear that heāll veto it.
Asked repeatedly by host Chris Wallace whether the House would revisit the Homeland Security spending bill, Boehner kept repeating that āThe House has done its job.ā ..
...Boehner can say āSenate Democrats should be to blame,ā but that wonāt make it so. Everyone knows how this is going to end: Both houses are going to pass a ācleanā spending bill, which Obama will sign. The only question is whether thereās a department shutdown along the way. If and when that happens, Republicans are going to be blamed, just as they were when they forced a total government shutdown in 2013. His calculation now seems to be the same as it was then: Iāll force a shutdown to show the tea partyers that Iām being tough and standing up to Obama, and then once it becomes clear that weāre getting the blame, thatāll give me the room to end the crisis by giving in and allowing the vote that will bring everything to a close. Itās not exactly a strategy to maximize his partyās political gain.
That brings us to the second ongoing PR catastrophe Boehner has engineered, the upcoming speech to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both here and in Israel, where Netanyahu faces an election next month, the speech has been roundly condemned for politicizing the relationship between the two countries, essentially turning the Israeli prime minister into a partisan Republican coming to the U.S. to campaign against President Obamaās approach to negotiating with Iran about their nuclear program. Worst of all, Boehner invited Netanyahu to make the speech without informing the White House, a bit of foreign policy usurpation that people in both parties find somewhere between inappropriate and outrageous....
...WALLACE: But when you talk with [Israeli ambassador] Ron Dermer about inviting Netanyahu, you told him specifically not to tell the White House.
Why would you do that, sir?
BOEHNER: Because I wanted to make sure that there was no interference. Thereās no secret here in Washington about the animosity that this White House has for Prime Minister Netanyahu. And I frankly didnāt want them getting in the way and quashing what I thought was a real opportunity....
...It may be that by now Boehner thinks that having come this far, he canāt rescind the invitation without making the whole thing look even worse. Thatās possible, but by making the invitation in the first place, and keeping it secret from the administration, he created a truly epic blunder, one that not only makes him look bad but also damages American foreign policy interests.
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Republicans may be defending this stuff now, but in a number of months, I bet they will not.
John Boehner (R-OH) is an absolute disaster as Speaker of the HOR.