Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Cleaning House

Tea Partiers go ballistic over Boehner.

The outside tea party-aligned group Senate Conservatives Fund is calling for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to be replaced in response to House Republican leadership’s decision to push a clean debt ceiling hike.

The powerful outside group’s call came in an email to supporters on Tuesday, shortly after House Republicans announced that they would give up on previous demands for a debt ceiling extension and instead support a clean hike. In the email Senate Conservatives Fund Executive Director Matt Hoskins wrote:

Republicans are giving up because they know that winning is impossible when their leaders are determined to lose. These leaders have telegraphed weakness to the Democrats and sabotaged conservative efforts so many times that Republicans now have no leverage. There’s only one solution.  John Boehner must be replaced as Speaker of the House.

Hoskins goes on to warn that Republicans will never have any leverage if Boehner stays as Speaker.

“Unless we install a new leader who will actually go on offense, Democrats will never fear us and we will never have any leverage,” Hoskins continued in the email.

The idea of governing by fear and stalemate is a short-sighted and fruitless way to get your way.  At some point, people are going to figure out that you’re all bark with very little bite, and even if they primary someone out of office, they end up losing the general election (vide Sharron Angle of Nevada, Richard Mourdock of Indiana, and Todd Aiken of Missouri).  On those rare occasions where some Tea Party favorite gets into office, they wear out their welcome with their colleagues, i.e. Ted Cruz.  (On the other hand, Tea Party favorites like Louis Gohmert provide hours of mirth on YouTube.)  So the only way they have of getting their way is to block everything, brag about it to their base, and blame the Democrats and the black guy when it blows up in their face.  At some point, the electorate will catch on to them.

Unfortunately, we haven’t reached the saturation point yet.  It probably won’t happen in this election cycle; the GOP will maintain the House and even pick up a Senate seat or two thanks to crazy-ass gerrymandering and bought-and-paid-for Koch-fiend races in safe nutsery districts.

John Boehner will survive this episode, more’s the pity, because the one thing he’s gotten really good at is getting nothing done, and that’s what the Tea Party and the GOP want.