Friday Reads: Boehner’s Short Goodbye
Posted: September 25, 2015 Filed under: Breaking News, morning reads, religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights 13 CommentsGood Morning!
Speaker Boehner just announced he will be retiring his seat and plans to quit the speakership. The embattled Speaker was facing yet another grueling fight over mundane financing issues from the radical right wing of his party.
Speaker John Boehner plans to resign from Congress in late October, he told member of his conference Friday morning in a closed door meeting, according to multiple reports emerging from the meeting room.
Boehner is second in line to the presidency, after Vice President Joe Biden. He was first elected to Congress in 1990. He has served as speaker since Republicans took control of the House in 2011.
Boehner was meeting with his conferenceto discuss plans to avert a government shutdown, looming next week. The speaker was under enormous pressure to keep the government open and satisfy conservative members of the conference who were refusing to vote for any bill that would provide funds for Planned Parenthood.
You’re in trouble when a member of your own caucus from your own state tries to find a candidate to primary you.
Republican sources say an ally of Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) has attempted to recruit a primary challenger against the GOP lawmaker who introduced a measure to oust the Speaker.
Three senior GOP sources told The Hill they’ve heard Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) has reached out to Republicans in North Carolina’s 11th District to gauge their interest in launching a primary challenge against Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).
Meadows is a Tea Party favorite who generated national headlines this summer after floating a plan to depose Boehner. McHenry is the chief deputy whip and a member of Boehner’s leadership team.
Boehner has been having his usual trouble with the party’s extremist religious right who is trying to defund Planned Parenthood and had threatened to shut down the government. The Senate has shutdown that possibility.
Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress on Thursday began advancing bills urgently needed to avoid federal agency shutdowns on Oct. 1 while navigating conservatives’ demands to punish Planned Parenthood over an abortion controversy.
The Senate defeated Republican efforts to use a funding extension bill to cut off money to Planned Parenthood, clearing the way for a version without that provision that extends all previous funding through Dec. 11.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has set the first procedural vote on that measure for Monday, two days before the federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.
I’m posting this so we can follow up with some live updates as they happen. So far, no names to replace the Speaker have been mentioned in the media,
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
From the NYT article I linked to in the previous thread:
“It will be up to the majority of the members of the House now to choose a new leader, and the leading candidate is Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, who is widely viewed more favorably by the more conservative members. The preferred candidate among many Republicans, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has said he does not want the job.”
Our government is going to be gridlocked if we get any more nuts at the helm of the Republicans. I was reading this is akin to him falling on his sword because he can get the help he needs from Pelosi to get the budget through.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/right-wing-base-already-hates-kevin-mccarthy-as-much-as-they-hated-john-boehner/
This is the same guy who set the House calendar these last 4 years that allowed him each Friday to return to Ohio so he could have a 3 day golfing weekend.
Not to mention that under his leadership the House met fewer days than any other congressional body since its inception.
They could elect someone worse but this guy was a disaster from the beginning with or without the Tea Party nut jobs.
Good riddance.
Wanna laugh?? http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/john-boehner-resigns-peter-king-reaction-214083#ixzz3mmI2e99t
At least they are acknowledging it out loud. They created these people through gerry mandering efforts to make the GOP into a one party nation and they are stuck with their own “creativity”.
We are stuck with the crazies for a generation to come. Shutting down the government over Planned Parenthood is just the beginning.
For King to be talking about “the crazies” they have to be even worse than I realized. King is pretty much a wacko himself.
I know. I just about fell off my chair when I saw the headline.
It’s pretty simple in my estimation, if the “moderates” are so damned upset that their party has been taken over by the crazies then the “moderates” should jump over to the Dems. It would neutralize the power of the crazies. Problem solved.
Charles Pierce on the Boehner resignation:
Still another reason why we simply have to elect Hillary. She is the only person who can handle or at least stymie these very dangerous people. Boehner, as bad as he might have been, was at least more of a standard conservative who did not want tthe government to collapse. These other people absolutely do not care; some of them would probably even welcome secession. They are so abysmally stupid (not to mention always wrong) that they think that not raising the debt ceiling, or having the government completely shut down and be unable to pay its employees, would be a good thing. I do not even want to think too much about what would happen if a Republican were elected to the White House. Sanders if nominated would not only lose, and increase that Republican House majority; but even if he would somehow win, he could not control these people. Hillary could; and she could also go directly to the voters and point out what the radical right is doing to the country, and possibly win a number of seats for Democrats, even with the gerrymandering the Republicans have done.
It may be unfair, but I do greatly blame Obama for all of this, as he started his campaign by essentially running away from the Democratic Party; and then when first elected, made his speech about “no red states, no blue states.” Does he still think that? You cannot run away from your own party in this two-party system; and you are not such a transcendent “I rise above politics” figure to effectively govern when the other party is run by people who represent the worst and stupidest of what America has ever had to offer, and you allow them to take over the Congress, and most of the state legislatures. Obama could be the last Democratic president ever, unless Hillary can win this time, and save the country. I just wonder if any of those Kos and related people realize their part in all of this. Dakinikat, you are the economic expert, but I would be looking for somewhere, anywhere safe to put my money, if the Republicans take over the country. The stock market will collapse, for starters.
Our very own emperor has chimed in on this like he does every other thing he thinks (unfortunately correctly) will get him some press:
http://news.yahoo.com/gop-2016-candidate-jindal-says-mcconnell-step-down-195512390–election.html
You have to wonder why nobody asked him who he would like to see step in to become part of the “clean slate” he calls for and/or whether he also thinks Steve Scalise should step down to make room for them. Oh, I forgot, the MSM usually just parrots whatever he says without question. If they treat his utterances with such casualness, we have to wonder why they consider them significant enough to disseminate at all?
P. S. Anybody who has ever stayed in a job they despised for way too long (like myself) can certainly appreciate Boehner’s sense of relief. At least he showed his humanity – more than you can say for most people in power.
……..
He is like a toddler vying for parental attention.