Speaker John Boehner resigns (yay?)

[Channel72]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/us/jo ... .html?_r=0

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner, under intense pressure from conservatives in his party, announced on Friday that he would resign one of the most powerful positions in government and give up his House seat at the end of October, as Congress moved to avert a government shutdown.

Mr. Boehner, who was first elected to Congress in 1990, made the announcement in an emotional meeting with his fellow Republicans on Friday morning.

“My first job as speaker is to protect the institution,” Mr. Boehner said at a news conference at the Capitol, adding, “It had become clear to me that this prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable harm to the institution.”

Looking poised and sounding rehearsed, Mr. Boehner, who stunned the capital with his news, became emotional as he recalled a moment alone with Pope Francis, who had been his guest the day before at the Capitol and who had asked the speaker to pray for him.

Reflecting on his decision, he said, “This morning, I woke up, said my prayers, as I always do, and thought, ‘This is the day I am going to do this.’ ”

He added, “I never thought I’d be in Congress, let alone be speaker.”

Mr. Boehner, 65, from Ohio, had struggled from almost the moment he took the speaker’s gavel in 2011 to manage the challenges of divided government and to hold together his fractious and increasingly conservative Republican members.

Most recently, he was trying to craft a solution to keep the government open through the rest of the year, but was under pressure from a growing base of conservatives who told him that they would not vote for a bill that did not defund Planned Parenthood.

Mr. Boehner’s announcement lessened the chance of a government shutdown next week, because Republican leaders will push for a short-term funding measure to keep the government operating and the speaker will no longer be deterred by those who threatened his job.

It will be up to a 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 viewed more favorably by the House’s more conservative members. The preferred candidate among many Republicans, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has said he does not want the job.

“John Boehner has been a great leader of the Republican Party and the House of Representatives,” Mr. Ryan said Friday in a statement. “This was an act of pure selflessness. John’s decades of service have helped move our country forward, and I deeply value his friendship. We will miss John, and I am confident our conference will elect leaders who are capable of meeting the challenges our nation faces. I wish John and his family well as he begins the next phase of his life.”

Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, said: “The next speaker is going to have a very tough job. The fundamental dynamics don’t change.”

Mr. Dent said there had been “a lot of sadness in the room” when Mr. Boehner made his announcement to colleagues, and he blamed the House’s hard-right members, who he said were unwilling to govern. “It’s clear to me that the rejectionist members of our conference clearly had an influence on his decision,” Mr. Dent said. “That’s why I’m not happy about what happened today. We still have important issues to deal with, and this will not be easier for the next guy.”

“The dynamics are this,” he continued. “There are anywhere from two to four dozen members who don’t have an affirmative sense of governance. They can’t get to yes. They just can’t get to yes, and so they undermine the ability of the speaker to lead. And not only do they undermine the ability of the speaker to lead, but they undermine the entire Republican conference and also help to weaken the institution of Congress itself. That’s the reality.

“Now, if we have a new speaker, is there going to be an epiphany? They won’t be happy if it’s Paul Ryan or Kevin McCarthy, who will have to make accommodations with a Democratic president and the Senate constituted the way it is.”

President Obama said that Mr. Boehner’s resignation had taken him by surprise, and he praised the speaker as a “good man” and a “patriot” who cared deeply about the House of Representatives.

“We have obviously had a lot of disagreements, and politically we are at the opposite end of the spectrum,” Mr. Obama said. But, he added, Mr. Boehner “has always conducted himself with civility and courtesy with me.”

And, the president said, Mr. Boehner is “somebody who understands that in government, governance, you don’t always get 100 percent of what you want.”

The president declined to speculate about Mr. Boehner’s replacement, but he warned that the next speaker should not be someone willing to shut the government down if policy demands were not met.

“You don’t invite a potential financial crisis,” Mr. Obama said. “You build roads, pass transportation bills. You do the basic work of governance. There’s no weakness in that. That’s what government is in our democracy.”

Mr. Obama promised to “reach out immediately” to whoever is the next speaker, and he said that he would continue to work with Mr. Boehner during the month before he leaves the House.

“Hopefully he feels like getting as much stuff done as he possibly can,” Mr. Obama said.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and the previous speaker of the House, learned about Mr. Boehner’s resignation when she read a breaking news alert on a staff member’s phone. “God knows what’s next over there,” she told staff members. “Coming from earthquake country, this is a big one.”

Ms. Pelosi, who had been negotiating privately on a plan to keep the government open, told reporters that Mr. Boehner’s resignation was “a stark indication of the disarray of House Republicans.”

The announcement came just a day after Pope Francis visited the Capitol, fulfilling a 20-year dream for Mr. Boehner, the son of a tavern owner from a large Catholic family, of having a pontiff address Congress. He had a private audience with Francis before the pope spoke to a joint meeting of Congress.

Mr. Boehner wept openly as the pope addressed an audience gathered on the West Lawn of the Capitol on Thursday. He no doubt understood that it was his last grand ceremony as speaker and, indeed, a capstone to his long political career, which began in the Ohio Statehouse.

“I am happy that one of his final memories will be watching the pope address an institution the speaker loved and served for many years,” Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, said. “He had an incredibly hard job, as whoever takes his place will learn.”

At the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, which was taking place just a few blocks from the Capitol, many jumped to their feet and cheered when Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, announced that Mr. Boehner was resigning.

“It’s time to turn the page,” Mr. Rubio said, deviating from his prepared text in an assertion tailored to the audience, whose views align with many who wanted to oust Mr. Boehner.

One of those fed-up Republicans is Joe Glover, a retired businessman from the Dallas area who was at the conference and could barely restrain his jubilation.

“I think it’s awesome,” Mr. Glover said. “No. 1, he needed to go, and No. 2, it should give us an opportunity to have a fresh voice and fresh leadership, because we haven’t seen the leadership from that office we need to see.”

Addressing reporters after his remarks at the conservative summit meeting, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas spoke harshly of Mr. Boehner.

“The early reports are discouraging,” Mr. Cruz said. “If it is correct that the speaker, before he resigns, has cut a deal with Nancy Pelosi to fund the Obama administration for the rest of this year, to fund Obamacare, to fund executive amnesty, to fund Planned Parenthood, to fund implementation of this Iran deal, and then presumably to land a cushy K Street job after joining with the Democrats to implement all of President Obama’s priorities, that is not the behavior one would expect from a Republican speaker of the House.”

Mr. Cruz declined to offer his view of Mr. McCarthy, saying only that he hoped House Republicans “select a strong conservative.”

Mr. Obama said he expected Republicans to debate who would be their next leader, but he was sanguine about the decision bringing significant change, saying, “It’s not as if there’s been a multitude of areas” where Republicans in the House have worked with him in the past.

“There were members in his caucus who saw compromise of any sort as weakness or betrayal,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Boehner. “When you have divided government, when you have a democracy, compromise is necessary.”

He urged the next speaker to work to avoid another shutdown. He said a shutdown would not just “hurt the economy in the abstract, it hurts particular families. And, as I recall, it wasn’t that good for the reputation of the Republican Party.”

Still, Mr. Obama said he expected “significant fights” on issues like the funding of Planned Parenthood and the overhaul of immigration.

While some conservatives were celebrating, one prominent Republican was upset at the news.

Senator John McCain of Arizona said that he was taken aback and that Mr. Boehner’s resignation had perilous implications for Republican prospects going into next year’s elections.

“It means that it’s in disarray,” Mr. McCain said in a brief interview. “Basically, he has been unseated. And that’s not good for the Republican Party.”

His advice? “We’ve got to unite and recognize who the adversary is.”

For decades, Mr. Boehner legislated as a stalwart Republican institutionalist. He became speaker after a Tea Party wave in the 2010 election swept Republicans into the majority in the House on a call to drastically curb federal spending and the role of government.

It was an agenda Mr. Boehner supported, but he quickly found himself hamstrung by the new members of Congress, who were undaunted by the fact that Democrats controlled much of Washington and that their ability to fulfill their goals would have its limits.

That conflict resulted in a 16-day government shutdown in October 2013, the brink of default on the nation’s debt and the undoing of former Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, who was the House majority leader. Mr. Cantor oversaw the movement of the right to empower Republicans, but he was ultimately defeated in a primary in 2014 by an unknown challenger whose candidacy was fueled by Tea Party energy.

A similar dynamic is shaping the Republican presidential primary process, with both Donald J. Trump and Mr. Cruz openly critical of congressional leaders.

On Friday, even as Republican members of Congress reeled from the news, the architects of the right-leaning movement cheered.

“Americans deserve a Congress that fights for opportunity for all and favoritism to none,” said Michael A. Needham, the chief executive of Heritage Action, a policy arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Too often, Speaker Boehner has stood in the way. Today’s announcement is a sign that the voice of the American people is breaking through in Washington. Now is the time for a principled, conservative leader to emerge. Heritage Action will continue fighting for conservative policy solutions, and we look forward to working with the new leadership team.”

Most recently, Mr. Boehner, a warrior in the anti-abortion movement for 30 years, was under pressure to try to cripple Planned Parenthood as part of a deal to keep the government open.

It sounds like he had enough of his crazy base.

[Iroscato]

Thank fuck. Sick of seeing that blubbering cunt on the news every week.

[Borgholio]

Say what you will about Boehner, it would probably be far worse to have someone even more conservative in that seat. One of the biggest complaints the far-right has had about him is that he "lacks leadership". Which, translated into normal English, means that he was willing to compromise and didn't pander to crazies. If someone like Ted Cruz became speaker...government would grind to a halt.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, me too, but whoever the Rabid Right replaces him with is likely to be a whackjob. Boehner at least had some notion of the need to compromise once in awhile, the ones cheering his departure view any sort of compromise as a sin.

You know, when some of the members of the opposition party express concern at his resignation and the timing it's not a good situation.

[Lord Revan]

Say what you will about Boehner, it would probably be far worse to have someone even more conservative in that seat. One of the biggest complaints the far-right has had about him is that he "lacks leadership". Which, translated into normal English, means that he was willing to compromise and didn't pander to crazies. If someone like Ted Cruz became speaker...government would grind to a halt.

and I'm pretty sure the nutjob wing of the GOP will try their darnest to get someone who's an utter fanatic as the next speaker, then blame it on the Democrats when the goverment grinds to a halt.

[Gaidin]

Compromise is the wrong word to use anyway. He more started his career when the word was negotiate.

[The Romulan Republic]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... -to-resign

John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives, will resign from Congress next month, he announced on Friday, in a stunning move that follows intense pressure from conservatives in the House.

The top Republican on Capitol Hill announced his resignation at a party meeting on Friday morning and later confirmed in a statement that he will step down on 30 October. It brings to a close a career spanning nearly three decades, and a four-year speakership that has been marked by Republican infighting following the party’s taking control of the chamber in 2011.

While addressing the media on Friday afternoon, a tearful Boehner cast his decision as one designed to protect the institution of Congress.
“I’m doing this today for the right reasons,” Boehner said. “And the right things will happen as a result.”

Boehner, 65, has long been under intense pressure from House conservatives, who have repeatedly threatened to stage a coup against him and expressed dissatisfaction with his leadership in high-profile fights on Capitol Hill. Boehner has survived many rebellions from the hard-right wing of his party over the years, notably over bipartisan deals that raised taxes in 2012 and resolved a government shutdown in 2013.

House conservatives, many of them members of the so-called Freedom Caucus, were again moving against Boehner in recent weeks amid a battle over federal funding for the women’s health organization Planned Parenthood. The chamber’s right flank is pushing an effort to strip funding for the agency from a must-pass bill to fund the government, a strategy that would all but guarantee another government shutdown.

Planned Parenthood has long been targeted by Republicans, but their efforts have intensified after the release of secretly recorded videos that raised questions about its handling of fetal tissue provided to scientific researchers.

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Aides to Boehner said the speaker ultimately made a decision to step aside “for the good of the Republican Conference and the institution”.

While the news of Boehner’s departure sent immediate shockwaves through Washington, the Ohio Republican said he initially planned to resign at the end of last year but stayed on “to provide continuity” after the stunning defeat of then House majority leader Eric Cantor in his 2014 primary election.

As news of his resignation broke, Boehner was praised by visibly shocked leaders in both parties.

“John Boehner’s a good man. He is a patriot. He cares deeply about the House … his constituents, and America,” Barack Obama said at a press conference, moments after speaking to Boehner on the phone.

“He has always conducted himself with courtesy and civility with me. He has kept his word when he has made a commitment.”

Aides and members of Congress in the room said Boehner received a standing ovation during the meeting at which he announced his resignation.

As speculation immediately spread over who would succeed Boehner, a number of influential Republicans took their names out of the mix.

Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the powerful House ways and means committee, told reporters he would not seek the job. “I don’t want to be speaker,” Ryan said.

North Carolina representative Mark Meadows, a conservative who in July filed a motion to remove Boehner as speaker, also ruled out a run.

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Kevin McCarthy of California, the House majority leader, is next in line as speaker but would have to secure the votes of his caucus in a formal leadership election.

The House speaker is second in line for the presidency after the vice-president and one of the most powerful figures in Washington. Boehner has thus shaped his party’s strategy for passing legislation, scheduled congressional business and been Barack Obama’s main foil on the Hill.

Boehner has faced repeated challenges to his leadership from the right wing of his caucus since ascending to the top post in the House in 2011.

Predictions of Boehner’s political demise abounded during the partial government shutdown of October 2013, which resulted from a showdown between hard-right Republicans who sought to deny funding for the president’s healthcare policy and Obama, who refused to sign spending legislation that carved the policy up.

The eventual deal that Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, negotiated with Obama failed to achieve Republican demands.

On Friday at the Values Voter Summit, an annual conclave of social conservatives in Washington, the room erupted in a standing ovation when the news was announced on stage by Senator Marco Rubio. Rubio seemed to embrace the news in his speech, saying: “The time has come to turn the page.”

Jim Bridenstine, a representative from Oklahoma, seemed to give credit for Boehner’s resignation to Texas senator and 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz. “The good news is we are going to get new leadership,” Bridenstine said. “I want to share with you why that is happening. That is happening because there is a newly elected senator that showed up articulating principles of the GOP platform.”

Cruz has a famously contentious relationship with Boehner, who last month at a closed-door fundraiser referred to the Texas senator as “a jackass”. Since his arrival on Capitol Hill in 2013, Cruz has helped orchestrate a number of rebellions against Boehner – most notably the shutdown over the president’s healthcare law.

In what were regarded as unprecedented moves by a member of the Senate, Cruz also routinely gathered House conservatives to plot strategies at odds with the will of Boehner and his leadership team.

Moderate Republicans were dismayed by what they said was a defeat for sensible voices within the party.

“To me, this is a victory of the crazies,” New York representative Peter King told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House and a close friend of Boehner’s, said his departure was “seismic”.

“The resignation of the speaker is a stark indication of the disarray of the House Republicans,” she said.

The shock announcement came a day after a highlight of Boehner’s career, when Pope Francis addressed Congress at Boehner’s invitation. The speaker, a former altar boy, wept during the speech and later called it “a blessing for us all”.

On Friday, the speaker broke down while recalling his meeting with Pope Francis, an encounter that aides said moved Boehner closer to his decision to announce his resignation the following day.


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Speaker John Boehner overcome by emotion during the papal visit. Link to video
“The Pope puts his arm around me and says, ‘Please pray for me,’” Boehner, a devout Catholic, said. “Who am I to pray for the Pope? But I did.”

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He added: “I woke up and said I my prayers … and I decided, today’s the day I’m going to do this,” Boehner said. “It’s as simple as that.”

He nonetheless maintained that his departure was rooted in a desire to bring House Republicans together.

“When you’re the Speaker of the House, your No 1 responsibility is to the institution,” Boehner said, adding that a potential vote by conservatives to remove him from the post would tarnish that commitment.

“I don’t want to put my colleagues through this … for what?”

While Boehner will not participate in the vote on his successor, he said McCarthy “would make an excellent speaker”.

“His number one responsibility is to protect the institution,” he added.

Minutes before the announcement, Boehner tweeted pictures of the pope’s Washington visit with the caption: “What a day.”

Boehner, first elected to Congress from his south-west Ohio district in 1990, had a turbulent career before becoming speaker. He joined the Republican congressional leadership in 1994, after the party took control of Congress for the first time in 50 years. Four years later, after the GOP lost seats in midterm elections and Boehner participated in a failed coup against then speaker Newt Gingrich, he was ousted.

Boehner became chair of the House education and workforce committee, a position in which he worked with Senator Ted Kennedy to author the landmark No Child Left Behind bill, and worked in a bipartisan manner with another Democrat, his counterpart George Miller of California.

He returned to leadership in 2006, winning an election to be the No2 Republican in the House. A year later, after Democrats took control of Congress, he moved up to become his party’s leader.

Kind of shocked this doesn't have its own thread yet. And alarmed that it looks like Ted Cruz scored a win here, much as I loath Boehner.

Anyhow, Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders quickly launched this response:

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/s ... -his-party

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Friday that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was "unable to control" his party and that his resignation could leave Republicans increasingly "out of touch."

"It appears that even a very conservative speaker like John Boehner is unable to control the extreme right-wing drift of Republicans in the House," Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement.

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He added that Republicans are "way out of touch with the American people" and that "without Boehner, it may get even worse."
The Ohio Republican announced during a closed-door meeting in the morning that he would retire at the end of October. The decision sets up a race among House Republicans to replace him.

Conservative lawmakers, who had recently talked of ousting Boehner, are already pledging to stick together so they could influence who is picked as his successor.

Senators on both sides of the aisle are praising Boehner in the wake of his decision to step down.

Sanders said during an interview with "The Thom Hartmann Program" that he is not "somebody intimately involved with Republican politics, but my guess is that he probably ran out of energy in terms of taking on the very extreme right wingers."

Damn. So we might be getting someone worse? Well, that doesn't raise my hopes regarding the prospects of avoiding the possible shutdown everyone's been talking about.

Edit: Damn. There was an existing thread and I somehow missed it. Could a moderator please merge them? My apologies for the inconvenience.

[White Haven]

It's five threads below you. Five.

[Elfdart]

Maybe being so close to the Pope yesterday made him start blubbering for real because the Weeping Boner realized that he was long overdue to repent his wicked ways. Now go forth and sin no more, Mr Ex-Speaker!

[Adam Reynolds]

As much as I disagree with his position on virtually every issue, it is somewhat commendable that he is stepping down in order to pass a budget rather than letting the Tea Party shut it down.

[SpottedKitty]

Compromise is the wrong word to use anyway. He more started his career when the word was negotiate.

You mean, when they actually did it sometimes, instead of the way they've mostly behaved for the last waytoomany years?

They keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.

[Edi]

Duplicate threads merged.

Can't say I'mn surprised or sorry to see Boehner go, but his succession and the lottery related to that will make for some interesting times in US politics.

[Lord Revan]

Duplicate threads merged.

Can't say I'mn surprised or sorry to see Boehner go, but his succession and the lottery related to that will make for some interesting times in US politics.

Lets just hope it won't get too intresting as generally when things get too intresting in the US it's generally us who end paying the price either due oil prices skyrocketing due to US invading another middle eastern country or simply US acting like an overgrown school bully when we don't dance to their tune.

[Broomstick]

It isn't always fun for us here, either.

After a half century living in the US, I'd just as soon have NON-interesting politics for a bit...would probably be better for everyone.

[Welf]

At least US politics is very educational for the rest of the world? US citizens are martyrs of freedom.

[SpottedKitty]

At least US politics is very educational for the rest of the world?

Trying to remember if I've got a Churchill quote right — something about Americans always going for the best option, after they've tried all the others? Or have I misremembered?

[Eternal_Freedom]

That's his line about democracy being the best form of government - apart from all the other forms.

[Welf]

He said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

[Eternal_Freedom]

Oh yes that was it.

[Wild Zontargs]

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else."
-- Winston Churchill

[SpottedKitty]

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else."
-- Winston Churchill

That's the one, thanks!

[Ahriman238]

Huh. Looks like he really was falling on his sword to prevent a shutdown. Doesn't exactly redeem him in my eyes or anything, but all the people (especially Cruz) who are railing against this should be on their knees thanking him for stopping the part from throwing itself off a cliff and thoroughly spiking any chance of 2016.

[Zaune]

Now we just have to wait and see if his replacement turns out to be sane...

[Ahriman238]

That, I fear, is entirely too much to hope for.

[Broomstick]

The guys they're proposing as replacements are, if anything, worse.