Speaker Boehner has been defeated. More importantly, the Teabagger Traitors have been defeated. As you may know by now, Speaker Boehner, early this morning, gathered his caucus, had Representative Southerland, who in a prior life, I swear to God, was a Undertaker in a Funeral Home, sing the Christian funeral hymn ‘Amazing Grace,’ all three verses of it, and then told them, per Robert Costa of the National Review, that he would rather throw a grenade than catch one. And so he tried desperately to craft a bill that will attract all Republican votes. Various add-ons and poison pills were bantered about all day, but in the end, the Boehner House Bill did not have the votes, and the bill, which was never really introduced, was pulled.
So now, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have resumed their negotiations, and according to MSNBC per a Senate Democratic source, a debt and budget deal that will avert default and reopen the government is “imminent.” And this just now from Twitter:
What that means is that, in order to short circuit Senate procedure, if the House sents over a message to the Senate, that message acts like a vehicle that is deemed “privileged” and thus not subject to the normal Senate rules, and thus the Senate can amend and vote on it right away. The message can simply be “Hi, I fucked up. John Boehner.” And then Harry Reid will amend it to include the Senate Deal language, pass it, and send it over to the House for a vote. So if Boehner is indeed sending over a clean message, that means he has officially surrendered. It likely means his career in DC is over.
For at this point, Reid has no incentive to craft the bill to garner GOP votes in the House, and thus Boehner will have to bring the Senate bill to the floor relying on Democratic votes and a smattering of GOP votes, most likely including his own. That will guarantee a coup against him by the Cruz faction of the GOP caucus. Boehner may lose that fight and be replaced. He may resign to preempt that fight. The only way I see him remaining in his job and as a relevant force in the Capitol is to lead a bipartisan governing coalition with the Democrats and ‘sane Republicans’ like Peter King to remain as Speaker. This bipartisan coalition will only pass the most basic deals, like raising the debt ceiling and continuing resolutions, and maybe, just maybe, immigration reform. But otherwise, it will be a caretaker government in the House until the 2014 elections. Boehner’s days as the leader of the House Republicans is over.
Absent a bipartisan coalition, his days of relevance are over. Boehner, as a leader of a party, cannot be trusted to deliver the votes of his party. So what is the use in even talking to him? I really am at a loss as to why he has not already resigned. He must have no integrity or honor. Or self respect.
But regardless, this fight appears to be over now. And the only thing the GOP got was apocalyptic poll numbers. All they did was put the House in play in 2014. Thanks.