Boehner’s worst failure yet: Incompetence, near-shutdown & sorry state of GOP “governance”

[DonViejo]

Speaker gets bailed out by Dems (again) after GOP rebukes him on DHS funding. Here's the bad news going forward

SIMON MALOY

On Friday afternoon, just a few short hours before the Department Homeland Security was set to shut down, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives scheduled a vote to grant DHS three more weeks of funding. The idea was to buy John Boehner some time to do… something. The legislative impasse that led us to the precipice of the shutdown was created by Boehner, who passed a bill tying DHS appropriations to the rollback of President Obama’s immigration executive actions. He spent several weeks insisting that the House had “done its job” and would not pass any new legislation funding DHS. But Senate Republicans and Democrats came together to pass a clean DHS funding bill, which forced Boehner to once again act. Rather than bow to political reality and take the only route available to him to actually fund the agency, Boehner opted to prolong the agony and punt.

And he couldn’t even do that. The three-week continuing resolution failed when over 50 conservative Republicans voted against it, rebuking Boehner and the leadership and sending the entire process into utter chaos with less than half a day remaining until the shutdown.

As has happened so many times over the last four years, the rest of the Congressional leadership was impelled to overcome Boehner’s incompetence and cobble together a last-minute solution. Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid pushed a one-week CR through the Senate late Friday night, and Nancy Pelosi instructed House Democrats to support its passage, with the promise from Boehner that the House would pass a clean, long-term DHS funding bill this week. The one-week bill passed with the overwhelming support of Democrats, and Obama signed it.

So, for all intents and purposes, the House minority leader was calling the shots last Friday, determining which legislation would pass and mapping out future votes. Boehner was along for the ride, keeping a low profile with the rest of the Republican leadership while the Democrats held press briefings sketching out the way forward. It’d be embarrassing enough of this had never happened before, but it’s getting difficult to keep track of how many times Pelosi has had to bail out Boehner. That it is still happening despite the fact that Boehner is now sitting on one of the largest Congressional majorities in decades is about as damning an indictment of his speakership as one could ask for.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/03/02/boehners_worst_failure_yet_incompetence_near_shutdown_sorry_state_of_gop_governance/

[CanonRay]

1. I personally don't want to see him go

He's such a screw-up, he makes the GOP look terrible which is fine with me.

[underpants]

2. Boehner is no match for RW radio and Fox News

[SmittynMo]

3. I say let him go.

He needs to go. He's been a total train wreck since elected.

The sooner we get the loons out, the better. I'd like to see a time where we have sincere politicians, where compromise was their job. We had it decades ago. The Tea party has destroyed it all for the republicans. And until we get the loons out of power, it will never happen.

[Wounded Bear]

4. The GOP has become a Gordian Knot of bigotry, Ludditism, and incomptetence...

If Boner is ousted, it is very likely a worse candidate will be elected. There was a time when Republican solidarity was something you could grudgingly admire. They might have been wrong, but they were all wrong together. Now, they seem to have several ways to be wrong and are plumbing the depths of variety in fuckupery, in public. Sadly, their supporters will always have someone else to blame. That's the nature of the beast.

If we're lucky, some of those "swing" voters who lean right will have a course correction next go. Well, if we're lucky and Dems run on something real this time.

[AlinPA]

5. I don't see anything different in Boehner than in Gohmert or any of the other crazies. Just

listen to Boehner's rhetoric which is the same as any other teabagger slob.

[craigmatic]

6. The system is broken the republicans aren't serious and aren't ready to govern yet we can't win the

house due to gerrymandering.