Well, it’s over. The White Flag has been raised.
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.
Is it over? Cruz and his Senate cohort could still gum up the works.
Like I said, the clean message from the House short circuits Cruz’s ability to gum up the works with a filibuster.
Later J Bone. You are now on the short list of people (along with Cheney, Bush and Rummy) that I hope die a very painful death.
You were as awful a human being as you were a awful speaker and an awful American.
A “message,” WTF? You mean Boner could have ended this at any time all along? I guess we learn something new every day. Looks like Cantor’s people forgot to close that loophole.
The problem is… Boehner isn’t Speaker of the House, Ted “secret meeting” Cruz is.
“The last straw for Boehner may have been catching some of his Teabagger members meeting with Cruz in the basement of a Washington Mexican restaurant.”
h/t dkos
(Oh, I get it – that was your link)
I don’t mind saying that I don’t underestimate the ability of this current GOP caucus to exercise their bad faith and still work at screwing the pooch for the rest of us. Brian Buetler’s article in Salon this AM has a great title:
GOP’s absurd final whimper: It’s all over but the crying
The “winners” appear to be the conservative Independent expenditure shops. Eric Erickson plans on funneling his money to them anyway.
Hopefully other Republicans will be so disgusted that they deprive the RNC of operating funds.
The most interesting thing for me is the extent to which the commenters at Red State swallowed the malarky about Obamacare being a mortal threat to the Republic.
From your keyboard to God’s eyes! Watching the GOP carry on like this for the past three weeks has made me apoplectic (more than usual)! I get an acute pain in my temple whenever I think about the way they’ve distracted the media from the Obamacare shitshow.
In case you were wondering, I’m all kinds of tingly with the schadenfreude glees over the apparent collapse of Obama’s Signature Legislation Law of the Land Passed By Congress Signed By the President Endorsed By the Supreme Court (did I miss anything?)! Probably almost as tingly as you guys are about the apparent collapse of the GOP…only voters will forget the GOP’s idiocy this month (like they had already forgotten the fiscal cliff debacle) while Obamacare will be the gift that keeps on giving through 2014 as people begin to realize just how much ‘free’ healthcare actually costs!
Are sticker-shock heart attacks covered by Obamacare? Asking for a friend. 🙂
Stop the presses. Dominique is still whining about the black guy.
I’m looking forward to being on the same side as Dominique when President H. Clinton takes office.
In the midst of all this warfare, I hope that Congress remembers that health care costs remain too high and that there are improvements that can and should be paid to the ACA. In short, I would hope that out of this debacle that Congress decides it’s job is to govern and not burn the house down (or being part of a bucket brigade to put the fire out, whichever is applicable for each member).
That won’t be done until the Dems win control of the House.
Jason: If H. Clinton takes office, it means 8 more years without a progressive in the White House.
Aww, Geeze, whatever helps you sleep at night, dumpling. 🙂
It used to make my blood boil whenever you kids used to call me a RAAAAACIST (!!!), but I’ve grown so accustomed to it that I actually giggle whenever I see it. It just reminds me of how desperate you are to find some malevolent reason for people to hate Him because the truth – that He has failed in EVERY. MEASURABLE. WAY – is way too much for you to stomach. Not enough Mylanta on the planet to soothe the pain of knowing that your One True Love turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Jimmy Carter.
FYI – Sorry, Jason, but that’s not likely to happen. God knows I loved me some HRC, and I know full well that we’d be in much better shape if you nudnicks had listened to me in ’08*, but I can’t stand the sight of her or Bill since they sold their souls and stepped in to bail out Dear Leader last year. I’m going to have to wait and see what the other side has to offer, then decide whether it’s worth leaving the comfort of my couch to cast a vote.
*and you know it, too, but you’re not likely ready to admit it yet
Geeze – ‘8 MORE years without a progressive in the White House’?? WTF do you think Obama is, a centrist??? He’s the left’s answer to Ted Cruz, for shit’s sake, and you want someone FURTHER left?? OMG…
I’ll admit to one thing regarding HRC. My belief that Republicans would go all out to sabotage her administration and would not go all out to sabotage an Obama administration was naive.
BTW – that you think Obama is a leftist demonstrates that you don’t understand what “left” means in American politics.
Obama is definitely a centrist – always was. To think otherwise demonstrates a startling lack of political knowledge.
In Dom’s world, a progressive is a politician that takes a health insurance plan from Heritage and a Republican governor and implements it nationwide with private insurers.
I am so old I remember when Dom was a liberal Democrat proudly supporting Hillary.
You’re not the first racist old Italian woman I’ve known, dearie. My mother was the same kind of asshole, and I let her know it regularly. Whenever I miss her, I think of you.
@DD: Dom was never a liberal Democrat. She’s a selfish old bat and always has been.
You all get to dance your victory dance; congratulations! The Republicans picked a fight that they didn’t have the balls to win.
Republicans didn’t have the balls to “win” (and thereby own) a complete economic catastrophe.
I will admit to a ‘startling lack’ of liberal political knowledge (mostly because it’s so laughably unrealistic that it hardly seems worth the time to explore), but I’m pretty good at recognizing a centrist BECAUSE I AM ONE, and Barack Obama is no centrist. I mean, in some respects, he’s a full-on Dick Cheney-esque, bomb-dropping, drone assassin wingnut; however, from an economic standpoint, he’s a full-on redistribution-loving liberal.
My hatred (and, yes, it is a full-blown hatred) of the fraud you call your leader stems from his mishandling of the economy. As I have said all along, my ONLY concern is the economy. And he’s completely shit the bed on that issue. You can try to sugarcoat it, but the numbers simply don’t lie. If you had an ounce of intellectual integrity, you’d be just as bitter as I am about what he’s turned out to be. Alas, you stubbornly refuse to admit that he is not the demigod you believed he was.
Geeze – I hold out hope that one day you won’t feel the need to personally attack an opponent when you’ve been PWND in a debate, but I know that’s pretty much Page 1, Section 1, Paragraph 1, Sentence 1 of the Liberal Handbook, so I’ll just continue to giggle whenever I read your drivel.
Also, I’m not old. 🙂
Notice Dana’s wording. He (and other Republicans, I’m sure) seems to be saying that if only the GOP held firm, then the outcome would have different.
Oh yeah, they’ll be doing this again… this time with balls. Ugh. Looks like they’ve learned nothing. But we’ve lived with this delusion for quite some time… their candidates never lose because their policies aren’t popular – they lose because they weren’t conservative enough. Same thing happening here: If only they had the resolve, had stood firm, then this debacle would have ended differently.
“Alas, you stubbornly refuse to admit that he is not the demigod you believed he was.”
Not true. I no longer think his image will be carved into Mt Rushmore in his lifetime. It will probably be 20 or 30 years after he passes.
Sorry, Dom, but you are not a centrist. Actually, I have no idea what you are other than an Obama hater, especially when we all remember how you supported Hillary – who ran on the exact same platform as Obama. Fine. This is obviously extremely personal for you.
And you don’t just have limited liberal political knowledge. You have a limited political knowledge. Period.
Mr 330 wrote:
If President Obama’s likeness were added to Mt Rushmore, the other four would get up and leave.
I’m hoping that the four Mt. Rushmore residents are rousing themselves to haunt (Christmas Carol-style) the teajhadis who think that shitting the bed = governing. compared to that crowd, Barack Obama does indeed look like a Founding Father.
Considering what the founding father saw as the proper role for government, I think that they’d be appalled by the idea that the federal government winds up funding state and local programs, that local public schools have to file compliance paperwork with the feds, those being just a very few of the ridiculous federal seizures of power. The Framers, as you may recall, gave the federal government the power to impose direct taxes on the people only in proportion to population; they would have been repulsed by the idea that the federal government would tax one citizen at a different rate than another.
The anti-federalists, most notably Patrick Henry, saw even that taxing power as destructive to our liberties, and that was their primary objection to the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson was reputed to have said that the best government is that which governs the least, though that’s possibly a myth; Henry David Thoreau was the one who definitely said that.
James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, believed that no Bill of Rights was needed because it was simply obvious that the federal government was given no powers to legislate in the areas eventually addressed by the Bill of Rights in the first place.
Considering that you can’t tell anyone with perfect certainty that the Founding Fathers expected that the government they started would persist exactly as they started it, this is just bullshit.
Everything changes, and since this is still a Democracy, it isn’t as though the people of this country didn’t want these things.
Because if you want to make the case that the government should be no different that when the Founders began it (even though they made said government a Democracy so that the people could have a say in any changes to said government), then I want you to admit that the 2nd Amendment gives you the right to an 18th century-era musket only.
The founders were collectivist hippies. You can tell by the ponytails and the overweening concern for promoting the general welfare.
I want you to admit that the 2nd Amendment gives you the right to an 18th century-era musket only.
Cassandra For the Win!
Not only that, Cassandra, but if our government and our rights can only be as the Founding Fathers envisioned, then that is an explicit endorsement of slavery. It is an endorsement of counting “negros” as 3/5ths of a person. It is an endorsement of having only white male property owners vote, with everyone else disenfranchised.
Right! And we are *so* not having any more of that shit.
And it is also an endorsement on the states violating your rights as contained in the Federal Bill of Rights. Remember, it was not until the 14th Amendment in 1860’s that the federal rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights were made applicable to the states. Before then, any state government could violate those rights with no consequence.
“Considering what the founding father saw as the proper role for government, I think that they’d be appalled by the idea…”
Do you think they would be appalled that black people now count as a whole person, instead of just two-thirds? Or perhaps they would find it appalling that women can now vote. I believe the founders would be appalled if we were still a nation that governed exactly the same as we did in their time; that we had not found it in ourselves to grow and with that growth make necessary and common sense changes. For instance the federal government no longer mandates that every man have a musket that they must purchase with their own funds.
While there is value in heritage and tradition to understand the republic, there is also value in recognizing that societies and governments evolve, acquiring some modicum of wisdom along the way so that we no longer drill holes in peoples brains or continue to be afraid that we will fall off the ends of the earth, or even thinking that women can prevent pregnancy during rape by the sheer force of her will.
It is knowledge and the application that knowledge that actually preserves the republic, so that government can promote the common defense AND promote the general welfare.
^ Like button needed ^
And yet all of them, when acting as representative of the people saw fit to compromise and when necessary, seize power. Failing to understand that politics is compromise is a sure sign of a conservative.
MY HEAD IS SPINNING FROM YOU GUYS SHOWING OFF HOW INCREDIBLY SMART YOU ALL ARE.
You’re totes right about the Founding Fathers, btw. They were probably high when they wrote that shit, so we should probably ignore the whole thing. I mean, we’re halfway there, right? 😉
Funny story – remember how fired up you guys were about violations to the Constitution when Bush was president? Good times…good times…
Pandora – I always figured I was a centrist because I’m a swing voting, pro-choice, pro-gay, (for the most part) anti-war, small government capitalist who doesn’t feel sorry for criminals, who thinks the only problem with the death penalty is that it isn’t used often enough, who thinks wayyyyy too many people are sucking on the government teat (and that said people should suffer consequences and be held responsible for their actions and [bad] decisions), and who doesn’t get her panties in a twist over things like the name of a football team. Maybe I’m wrong, tho. Maybe I’m not a centrist. I’m obviously not as into (or adept at) labeling as you are, so I’ll defer to your good judgment.
And, please, in the name of all that his holy, don’t compare Hillary to Obama. He may have glommed onto her platform (because, let’s be honest, he didn’t – and still doesn’t – really believe in anything but his own awesomeness), but there’s no way in hell a Clinton would have let the economy fizzle because she was too busy doing the Dougie with Jay Z and B.
You’re a libertarian and if you think Barack Obama is a liberal, you do not know what a liberal is. He’s to the right of Ronald Reagan.
Bill passed around 7:15