SEPTEMBER 25, 2015
Speaker of the House John Boehner disclosed today that will resign the speakership and his seat in Congress at the end of October. The resignation announcement, which came as a bit of a surprise to many Congressional staffers, was made one day after Boehner, a devout Catholic, presided over Pope Francis’ speech to a joint session of Congress. He became Speaker in January 2011 when Republicans took over the majority of the House and elected the veteran Ohio congressman to lead them. It was one of the great wishes of Boehner’s life.
Be careful what you wish for.
Boehner is a old-school Republican legislator, accustomed to reaching across the aisle and using compromise to achieve GOP goals, and he was anxious to use his new post to achieve that end. It was not to be. Unfortunately for him, a major reason that the GOP took the House and that Boehner became speaker at all was the 2010 election of 35-40 Tea Party activists, who were sent to Washington precisely not to be bipartisan and compromising. Their numbers were not large enough to take over the leadership of the House, but they could significantly gum up the works.
And gum it up for Boehner they did. In 2012, the Tea Party wing failed to back a pet Boehner proposal regarding tax cuts, and an embarrassed Speaker had to pull the bill. It 2013, it was a farm bill (which always passes) but the Tea Partiers held out and shamed Boehner again. It happened again in 2014 with a fight on the debt limit. To any objective observer, it appeared that the Speaker had lost control of his caucus.
There had been attempts to oust Boehner before, but the votes were never there to succeed. However, within the past few weeks, that talk has resumed, with upcoming threats to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood, a shutdown that Boehner publicly opposes. There is little doubt that Boehner still had enough votes to retain his speakership, but this fight promised to be protracted and ugly, a glaring example of a party in disarray, which the GOP could ill afford to display in the midst of a contentious Presidential campaign. So Boehner fell on his sword, putting the party ahead of his personal power.
House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is expected to be easily elected as Boehner’s successor — though an establishment pol, he’s much cozier with the Tea Party wing than Boehner ever was. If that occurs, the real bloody battle will be over who will replace McCarthy, and the embarrassing food fight that Boehner had hoped to avoid may just happen anyway.
Boehner’s departure marks a loss of a real character from the Congressional scene. Perhaps the most overtly emotional politician in recent memory, he would break into tears at the drop of a hat. He openly wept from the Speaker’s chair yesterday during the Pope’s address to Congress and again got choked up in public today. He was also known for his excessive tan which regularly brought mockery from his critics, who also joked that Boehner’s diet consisted entirely of cigarettes and merlot.
But if Boehner had any regrets, he never showed it at this afternoon’s press conference, where he jauntily entered singing “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” Maybe it was his private meeting yesterday with the Pope, maybe it’s just relief at being able to announce out loud what he’s been thinking for months, but this afternoon John Boehner seemed to be a man at peace.
He ended the press conference with a reprise of “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” And then he was gone.
