New emails released by the State Department between presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and confidant Sidney Blumenthal reveal that Blumenthal was looking to target incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner.
“Boehner is despised by the younger, more conservative members of the House Republican Conference,” Blumenthal wrote to Clinton. “They are repelled by his personal behavior.”
“He is louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle,” he described.
“He is not Gingrich, the natural leader of a ‘revolution,’ riding the crest into power,” Blumenthal said of Boehner. “He is careworn and threadbare, banal and hollow, holding nobody’s enduring loyalty.”
“Boehner is neither feared nor loved,” he goes on. “He’s a would-be DeLay without the whip. He’s the one at the end of a lash.”
And the harsh words weren’t reserved just for Boehner. Blumenthal said then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was “relatively in the same position in the Senate.”
Hillary Clinton was thankful for Blumenthal’s “observations,” saying, “Needless to say, I’m so distressed over all of this,” referring to the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives.
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