John Boehner should resign as Speaker.

[kentuck]

But before he does, he should let the entire House vote on the shutdown and he should try to persuade enough Republicans to vote with the Democrats to keep the shutdown from happening. For all the damage and headaches he has caused since he has been Speaker, this could allay some of the fears he has helped to create.

It's the best thing he could do. At least, he could maintain a bit of integrity and try to live with himself. After all, what good is it being the Speaker of the House if you are led around by the nose by the Tea Party anyway. You are no leader - you are a pig with a snout ring.

[madamesilverspurs]

1. Except that

Boehner's stuporific incompetence would be replaced by Cantor's slithering and deliberate evil. Safest way to rid ourselves of Boehner is for us to retake the House.

[gopiscrap]

3. Agreed

[gopiscrap]

4. Orange Man would never be that classy.

[Salviati]

5. If he's going to go out in a blaze of self-immolation...

it's better that he do it over the debt ceiling, and maybe that's what he was trying to do (though I doubt it...) Get the teahadists to put all their eggs in the debt ceiling basket, and then stab them in the back on his way out. If that was his plan, it would raise my estimation of him, to merely contemptible!

[delrem]

6. I think there are huge problems with *wrong* people being in power representing *both* main Parties.

There are huge problems in how power is distributed within each Party, in *both* cases power being sharply distributed to the "right".
The diagram of choice (by pundits) puts Dems to the "left" of Reps, and it's explained that the reigning political dynamic is that Dems "triangulate" using the "middle-right" as node. This supposedly gives the Dems the assured votes of "the left", whatever that is. Even a tentative definition of what might be "the left" isn't spelled out by this abstract.

[madrchsod]

7. no one wants to be remembered as one of the worse at anything.

without the tea party the orange man probably would have been a decent leader.