Charles Krauthammer said it again in last night’s Special Report All-Star Panel, about John Boehner: “He cannot control his caucus.” They’ve discussed this several times. I’d call it a Freudian slip, but it wasn’t a slip. I don’t think these inside-the-beltway nominal conservatives see any problem with that phrasing. It’s revealing about how they think.
Those of us out here – the country class – the outside-the-beltway people – we view power as flowing upward. John Boehner derives his power from his caucus, and his caucus in turn derives its power from the people. But they view the people, the tea party, the base, as an unruly bunch who has to be controlled. We really get in the way of what they want to do.
I view what John Boehner did in this government shutdown drama as utter betrayal. Mark Levin played a clip of an interview he had just after the 2012 election in which he said that he had no intention now of trying to repeal Obamacare. It is the law of the land, and Obama won the election, so it’s behind us. I think he was telling the truth then, that he is comfortable with just letting it take effect. And assuming that he was expressing his true feelings at the time, that means this government shutdown was just for show – he planned from the start to eventually capitulate. He was not serious about defunding Obamacare.
They tell us that the Republican party is at a low point in popularity. It’s no surprise. When they diss their base, that’s what’s going to happen.
Here’s what Boehner would have done if he had been representing his caucus instead of trying to control them:
- He would have mocked the Democrats’ call for a “clean” continuing resolution. It is never “clean.” After all that pontificating about it needing to be clean, it ended up saddled with favors and who knows what all.
- He would have called the continuing resolution by its more appropriate name: another stopgap funding bill.
- He would have reminded the people and the press about the legitimate functions of the House of Representatives that Obama was trying to seize for himself:
a. The Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power of the purse. Obama wants that power for himself, but this is not how the government is supposed to operate. Funding is supposed to be controlled beginning with the House of Representatives, because that is the body that is closest to the people.
b. Our government is supposed to operate with a system of checks and balances. The mandate of the Republican majority in the House when it was elected in 2010 was to be a check on Obama’s power. - He would have talked more about the personal liberty that is being robbed by Obamacare.
- He would have talked more about the true fiscal cliff that is looming by the out-of-control borrowing by the federal government.
- He would have listened to the people, who have been overwhelming their representatives in Congress with calls to do everything they could to block the implementation of Obamacare.
It’s time to get rid of John Boehner.
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