Editorial Roundup: In House GOP, ‘Tail is Wagging the Dog’
Speaker John Boehner's shocking decision to resign from Congress is a sorry measure of how far right-wing extremism has immobilized the Republican Party and undermined the process of healthy government…
Whomever the Republicans choose as the next speaker will have to show even greater obeisance to the right than Mr. Boehner did…
The latest challenge — a threatened government shutdown over demands by conservatives that Planned Parenthood be defunded — is exactly the kind of absurd and dangerous move that the right wing has made its signature tactic…
If nothing else, this intramural brawl makes it ever clearer that congressional Republicans are incapable of governing themselves, much less the nation.
House Speaker John Boehner's surprise announcement today that he would resign was a direct result of the House Republican caucus' internal dispute over Planned Parenthood funding and a possible shutdown of the federal government, but it was also the straw the broke the back of his fractious four years as speaker. His decision only underscores how ungovernable the highly polarized GOP majority has made the House in recent years…
Here's what the whole debacle really comes down to: an inability to act rationally. Whatever good will Pope Francis sought to bring to the chambers on Thursday, his call for unity fell on deaf ears. Tea party Republicans are merely playing to the polls — like the recent Fox News public opinion survey that found that 62 percent of GOP primary voters felt "betrayed" by politicians in their party — with many calculating that the benefit to their political careers of a truly futile gesture like a government shutdown outweighs the cost to taxpayers.
It reflects the deep ideological divisions in Washington and the nation, and it emboldens the most extreme conservatives in Congress and in the crowded field of Republican candidates for president. Expect more dysfunction in the dysfunctional House and more gridlock at least until next year's election…
This has been the least productive period for Congress in history…Yet the gridlock is likely to get worse before it gets better.
Boehner has long been a target of his party's hyperpartisan insurgents, who want him to be more confrontational with President Obama and Democrats. After a destructive 16-day government shutdown concocted in 2013 as an unsuccessful effort to repeal Obamacare, they are now pushing for another shutdown — this one to force the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
Whatever momentary advantage Boehner's resignation offers... It will encourage the far right to be more aggressive. The most likely successor, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., would face the same problems Boehner does in dealing with Republicans' intensifying civil war. If a shutdown is averted in the coming week, it could still threaten again as soon as mid-December.
The leadership challenge he was handed didn't demand deal-making skills as much as it required creating the space for deal-making to happen in the first place. That, in turn, depended on sidelining an insurgent right wing that has made the House dangerously incapable of compromise on major policy questions, except in the most pressing of circumstances.
What's clear is that a loud faction in Mr. Boehner's GOP caucus seems as hostile as ever to the process of governing in a democracy. The House will not deliver much until its leaders allow a simple majority — of Republicans and Democrats — to vote on budgeting, immigration and other crucial issues. Mr. Boehner was loath to call votes when he might need to rely on Democrats. The result was to hand the reins to the extremists…The way the House currently operates is bad for the country.
The abrupt decision by John A. Boehner to step down as speaker of the House and resign his seat in Congress has elated the bitter-ender conservatives who have made his life miserable for virtually his entire tenure. But it's bad news for those — including Republican members of Congress — who recognize that Boehner's right-wing critics were living in a fantasy world.
… But while the purist conservatives couldn't work their will on national policy, they were often able to hamstring Boehner, a deal-maker forced to preside over a Republican caucus with a significant minority for whom compromise was anathema. As a result, the speaker was under constant pressure to limit the agenda to proposals that could pass with GOP votes alone – an approach that requires the support of 218 of the 246 House Republicans. That is a recipe for paralysis and poor governance.
Time and again as House Speaker, Boehner buckled or bent rather than confront head-on a relatively small number of uncompromising hard-right conservatives in his own Republican caucus.
A Republican-controlled Congress has no choice but to compromise when there is a Democrat in the White House. That's the only way a divided government gets stuff done. But the tail is wagging the dog. A relatively small number of hard-right conservatives in the House regularly stymies the efforts of Republicans who are more interested in governing than in hold-ups. The no-compromise faction would hold the government hostage to one hot-button issue after another, from funding Planned Parenthood to reauthorizing funding for the Export-Import Bank to raising the debt ceiling.
Speaker of the House John Boehner is the latest scalp claimed by a faction of the Republican caucus that cares more about making immature political statements than tending to the good of the nation…
Again and again, he struggled to corral anti-government rebels — who had made fantastical promises to dismantle Obamacare and dramatically shrink federal spending — into something approximating a constructive caucus.
As U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican, told The New York Times, the new tea party members – between 25 and 50 in the caucus, by his count – simply won't [compromise].
"They can't get to yes," he said. "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 Republican conference and also help to weaken the institution of Congress itself. That's the reality."
The problem with the right-wing ideologues in the Republican Party in Congress is that they stick by their hard-line and eschew any compromise, even when the best interests of their country and even the very stability of government are put at risk…
House Speaker John Boehner's surprise announcement Friday of his plans to resign is yet another sign of the hopelessly partisan divide that has made governing this nation near impossible. Boehner has strained to hold sway over the House since he was first elected to the speakership in 2011… He was heading toward yet another showdown with conservative Republicans who want the government shut down over funding of Planned Parenthood and other issues.
…The move jolted Capitol Hill and laid bare the intractable divisions within the Republican Party over how to wield its congressional majority.
Boehner's announcement portends more gridlock in the House over issues dear to the heart of GOP conservatives, who have been unwilling to compromise…
Extremism has no place in good governance.
In far too many instances the Republican majority over which he presided had become its own worst enemy — fractious and unwilling to compromise even in caucus to move essential money bills, thus risking a government shutdown. And that's a political argument Republicans never, ever win…