First, the background:
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), under fire from Northeast lawmakers in his own party, is promising to pass an emergency spending bill to help pay for damage from Hurricane Sandy in the next Congress, which starts Thursday.
“The Speaker is committed to getting this bill passed this month,” Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said Wednesday.
That last paragraph tells you all you need to know — Boehner can’t control these lunatics, because he’s probably the worst Speaker in recent memory. He’s hoping that shaking up the caucus a bit will make passage easier. So he’s letting people in the northeast suffer, because he has no damned idea how to lead. It’s the same reason he walked away from the fiscal cliff negotiations and demanded that the Senate come up with something on their own.
Which brings us to a second, related item: Breitbart is reporting that House GOP is going to boot Boehner from the Speakership. I think that’s unlikely — and not just because I’m so certain that everything from a Breitbart URL is automatically horseshit. It’s because Boehner leads by following.
Imagine if you were a kid with a babysitter who let you stay up as late as you want, eat all the ice cream you want, etc. If your parents asked you who you wanted to babysit next time, what do you think you’d say?
You’d say, “I want that John Boehner guy again!” The Orange One is going nowhere.
