Signs of intelligent life in the GOP caucus? Maybe.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he believes the primary goal of President Obama’s second term is to “annihilate the Republican Party.”
“Given what we heard yesterday about the president’s vision for his second term, it’s pretty clear to me that he knows he can’t do any of that as long as the House is controlled by Republicans,” Boehner said in a speech Tuesday to The Ripon Society. “So we’re expecting over the next 22 months to be the focus of this administration as they attempt to annihilate the Republican Party.
“And let me just tell you, I do believe that is their goal — to just shove us into the dustbin of history.”
Boehner also ripped into Obama for his unseriousness regarding the nation’s fiscal crisis.
“In our meetings before Christmas, the president was so tired of me talking about when we were going to deal with an entitlement crisis that he looked at me and said: ‘Boehner, we don’t have a spending problem. We have a healthcare problem.’ It gives you some idea of the challenge that we’re facing,” Boehner said.
“For a guy who’s run up the deficit 60 percent — 60 percent of the deficit has occurred under his watch — when you see this, and then you hear him say: ‘I am not going to negotiate on the debt limit. I am not going to deal with the debt limit. That’s Congress’s problem!’ … Frankly, I think it’s irresponsible.”
Boehner’s speech was not open to the press, but The Ripon Society, a Republican think tank, released a transcript and video on Wednesday with the knowledge of the Speaker’s office.
Talking to the choir in the rehearsal room doesn’t do any good. Boehner needs to make this case clearly and consistently outside closed-door sessions.
Well, this is somewhat off topic but I think he was one of the few with dignified manners in that hollow, undignified Inauguration.He showed his disgust.
– Boehner has been played like a Hohner harmonica so now he’s a pitch pipe.
Speaker Boehner may also realize that the primary goal of some cancer surgeries is to remove a tumor. That doesn’t mean if he had a scalpel he would be up to the task.
So, Boehner has a clue? Big deal. There is a whole lot of disconnect between Boehner’s words and his actions. Until I see a budget with current year across the board cuts I will stick to my belief that the current crop of Republicans doesn’t have the backbone to lead. The House holds the country’s purse strings and they need to use that power to defund a cornucopia of wasteful, punative and obsolete laws, excutive orders and departments. I couldn’t care less what they say, I want to know what the Republicans in congress are going to do.
This is the Republican Party that couldn’t find any pay-fors or cuts, none at all, to fund the grotesquely bloated hurricane bailout bill.
So, no, they won’t actually do anything but act as the dramatic foil for Obama over the next four years. Frankly, when you get right down to it, they don’t have that many differences with him on issues of national security or spending. Obama has continued fighting the wars pretty much as Bush, McCain, or Romney would have done. The Repubs keep voting through continuing resolutions that keep our $1TT deficits in place.
Sure, they may (or may not; we’ll have to see) stop new gun control, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they vote through universal background checks (the precursor for registration) and even magazine limits. I do expect them to stop cap and trade, but again, I wouldn’t be shocked if they voted through a carbon tax under the guise as a new revenue source needed for “fiscal responsibility”.
Sadly, I am no longer shocked by anything the GOP does. They talk a pretty good game but they don’t do anything-or at least anything positive. I haven’t lost all faith in the party but I’ve got to say my faith seems to be wasted.
To answer your title question – Nope. Boner’s still going to play the frog with the scorpion (Obama) on his back. It’s in both their natures.
“Boehner needs to make this case clearly and consistently outside closed-door sessions.”
Obama doesn’t have to destroy the Republicans. Boehner is doing it without the narcissist’s help. And all of the republicans who support Boehner and what he stands for (which appears to be nothing more than making nicey nicey with the media) are just as culpable.
He’d need to grow a set first and with the amount of radiation he’s dosing his skin with, I’d venture to say that whole area of his anatomy is pretty much a nuclear wasteland.