- Congressional agenda thrown into disorder with Boehner’s departure
- The 4 Worst Things John Boehner Did As Speaker
Wasn't it already that way when he was present?
According to Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress,
See the article for Volsky's reasoning.
- Boehner shut down the government to protect the country from “the threat of Obamacare.”
- Boehner killed bipartisan immigration reform because Healthcare.gov had technical difficulties.
- Boehner turned the debt ceiling into a political football.
- Boehner ran the least productive Congress in history.
And on a miscellany of outrages:
- Maine Mayor Wants To Publish Names And Addresses Of Welfare Recipients Online
- Voters Raise Concerns About Bernie Sanders’ Record On Guns
OK, I never said Bernie was perfect. His explanation is just about right: city needs and country needs are different, and Vermont is a small state with mostly small‑to‑medium towns; I would expect most Vermonters not to understand what living in a crime‑ridden city is like, a place like Houston where the evening news lists the two to five major shootings of the day...
- Some Counties In Texas Actually Are Denying Birthright Citizenship
I'd heard that Republicans were really into stocks, but I didn't know it meant that kind of stocks...
That was the sound of our nation's founders, as well as the framers of the 14th Amendment, turning in their graves. If birthright citizenship is to be denied, I propose we start with Donald Trump.
I would say Boehner's best decision as speaker is his resignation.
ReplyDeletec - maybe. We progressives may come to regret his resignation when we see what monster replaces him as Speaker. And I fear Obama's years as an effective president, if he indeed had any, are over.
DeleteIt seems there are two basic categories of Republican these days: 1) conservative, and 2) sane. That's largely because the self-classified "conservatives" aren't really conservatives; they are right-wing radicals hellbent on turning our government into an oligarchy advantageous only to the 1%, or perhaps the 0.01%... the truly obscenely wealthy. (I am not opposed to wealth in and of itself: as I read Eleanor Roosevelt's autobiography, I am repeatedly reminded that historically, some of America's wealthiest citizens used their riches in part for constructive, even benevolent purposes. But that behavior becomes rarer every day.)
Back to Boehner, I think he was left with no choice. Unable to control the extremists in his conference, he was unable to accomplish even what a moderate Republican might at one time have been able to accomplish, and I suspect privately he grew weary of facilitating what the radicals wanted. Shutting down the government, repeatedly, for dubious purposes the first time and for increasingly constitutionally questionable purposes each succeeding time it was threatened? I would think a truly conservative Republican would be uncomfortable with that, and a man moved to tears by his spiritual leader's reminder of the duties of any democratic government may finally have decided it was time to, ahem, get the Hell out of government. :-)