In an interview published today on the website of the Stanford Daily, John Boehner was delightfully blunt about his opinion of Ted Cruz:
“Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
In the interview, Boehner says that he and Donald Trump are friends, that they play golf together and that he will vote for Trump if Trump is the Republican nominee. But not for Cruz.
The story suggests that the interviewer, David Kennedy, a history professor emeritus at Stanford, may have tricked Boehner into being especially candid by pointing out that the interview was not being broadcast. But how could Boehner have thought that the words of his I quoted above would not be quoted by about a bazillion people, including just about every political broadcast journalist in the US and a lot outside the US?
The Stanford Daily story does not mention whether or not Boehner was drunk at the time of the interview.
Well, we've got a lot of prominent Republicans saying they will not vote for Trump if he's the Republican nominee; and some saying they won't vote for Cruz, period. You may say that there is always a certain amount of rough-and-tumble during Presidential campaigns, and that party members tend to swallow whatever personal animosities they may have and come together for the sake of the party by November, and that's true. But this Republican Presidential campaign is different. It's very hard to walk back statements like “Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
Showing posts with label john boehner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john boehner. Show all posts
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Where Do Republicans Go From Here: Further Down The Toilet Of Tea Party Insanity, Or Back Toward Relative Bipartisan Sanity?
From early this morning the news has been full of confident reports that the idiotic Republican shutdown is about to be put behind us. I won't fully believe it until it's done, but the reports are nearly unanimously confident that Congress will in fact pull its head out of its ass and the chestnuts of the global economy out of the fire.
So. If we're wrapping up the shutdown now -- will the rightwing nutbags be able to do it again? Soon? It seems so stupid to me that so many nonextremist Republicans let them get away with this, let themselves be pushed around so. Perhaps they haven't studied the end of the Weimar Republic as much as I.
If the deal is going through now and the Bizarro-World episode is almost over, if we're there, it's because mainstream Republicans are siding with the Democrats against the Tea Party in sufficient numbers. Which they should have been doing since well before the 2010 midterms, from the point of view of they own self-interest, nevermind considerations of things like sanity, reality and common decency. 3 years' worth of cooperation with idiots and psychopaths, the most spectacular example of which, before the last couple of weeks, was the 2011 budget crisis, has done huge damage to the Republican brand. I predicted it had well before the 2012 elections. Democratic gains in 2012, due in no small part to the defections of non-batshit-crazy Republican voters appalled at everything for which the Tea Party stands, proved me right, and the catastrophic plummeting of Republican approval ratings during the shutdown is sending the same message to any Republican with ears and a functioning brain: Dump the Tea Party, the sooner and more emphatically, the better.
You can't be a little bit pregnant and you can't be a little bit okay with psychotic political partners. When the whole fucking world is appalled at your political allies of convenience, whether you're von Papen in 1932 and those partners are the Nazis or you're John Boehner in 2013 and those partners are the Tea Party, it's time to stop and consider the opinion of the whole fucking world, and think about whether, in the long term, that opinion should outweigh the political gains you're trying to obtain by allying yourself with a fringe group of fascists who hate you just as much and respect you just as little as they do anyone else.
The 2012 elections told mainstream Republicans that their partnership with the Tea Party was political poison, that it was just a sheer disaster. Some of them listened. The public reaction to the shutdown is telling them the same thing. A few more have been listening, still not very many. The 2014 midterms will scream it so loud you'll wonder how anyone possibly couldn't hear. But keep in mind that many mainstream Republicans still thought Romney was going to be elected President late in the evening of Election Day 2012. Perhaps things like that should make us wonder whether many of the mainstream Republicans aren't just plain stupid. I'm talking about the mainstream, never mind the Mad Hatters of the Tea Party.
Anyway: Republican Senators and Congresspeople, on behalf of the Democratic Party, thanks once again for providing us with tons of priceless campaign advertising material for which we won't have to spend a lot of money, but just quote you and run raw audio and video of you. You're really being a tremendous help.
So. If we're wrapping up the shutdown now -- will the rightwing nutbags be able to do it again? Soon? It seems so stupid to me that so many nonextremist Republicans let them get away with this, let themselves be pushed around so. Perhaps they haven't studied the end of the Weimar Republic as much as I.
If the deal is going through now and the Bizarro-World episode is almost over, if we're there, it's because mainstream Republicans are siding with the Democrats against the Tea Party in sufficient numbers. Which they should have been doing since well before the 2010 midterms, from the point of view of they own self-interest, nevermind considerations of things like sanity, reality and common decency. 3 years' worth of cooperation with idiots and psychopaths, the most spectacular example of which, before the last couple of weeks, was the 2011 budget crisis, has done huge damage to the Republican brand. I predicted it had well before the 2012 elections. Democratic gains in 2012, due in no small part to the defections of non-batshit-crazy Republican voters appalled at everything for which the Tea Party stands, proved me right, and the catastrophic plummeting of Republican approval ratings during the shutdown is sending the same message to any Republican with ears and a functioning brain: Dump the Tea Party, the sooner and more emphatically, the better.
You can't be a little bit pregnant and you can't be a little bit okay with psychotic political partners. When the whole fucking world is appalled at your political allies of convenience, whether you're von Papen in 1932 and those partners are the Nazis or you're John Boehner in 2013 and those partners are the Tea Party, it's time to stop and consider the opinion of the whole fucking world, and think about whether, in the long term, that opinion should outweigh the political gains you're trying to obtain by allying yourself with a fringe group of fascists who hate you just as much and respect you just as little as they do anyone else.
The 2012 elections told mainstream Republicans that their partnership with the Tea Party was political poison, that it was just a sheer disaster. Some of them listened. The public reaction to the shutdown is telling them the same thing. A few more have been listening, still not very many. The 2014 midterms will scream it so loud you'll wonder how anyone possibly couldn't hear. But keep in mind that many mainstream Republicans still thought Romney was going to be elected President late in the evening of Election Day 2012. Perhaps things like that should make us wonder whether many of the mainstream Republicans aren't just plain stupid. I'm talking about the mainstream, never mind the Mad Hatters of the Tea Party.
Anyway: Republican Senators and Congresspeople, on behalf of the Democratic Party, thanks once again for providing us with tons of priceless campaign advertising material for which we won't have to spend a lot of money, but just quote you and run raw audio and video of you. You're really being a tremendous help.
Friday, October 11, 2013
'IT'S TIME FOR SOMEONE TO ACT LIKE A GROWN-UP'
That's a huge banner headline, in bold print with letters an inch high, over a story about more traditional Republicans lambasting the batshit-crazy Tea Party and its minions such as John Boehner for not facing reality and ending the government shutdown. It's a quote from John Sununu.
Next to the Tea Party, John Sununu is a moderate, centrist voice of reason and conciliation.
Under that banner headline is a big picture of Ted Cruz and John Boehner. Such a picture is not a reassuring sight under such a headline. Well, really, it's just about Boehner. Cruz can continue to act crazy, or to be crazy, if it's the case that it's not an act. It doesn't really matter much what Cruz does. As I've pointed out before on this blog, Boehner can end this shutdown any time he likes. Republican approval ratings plummet rapidly as he refuses to end the shutdown and the days go by. More and more pollsters are saying that, because of other things too but mostly because of this shutdown, the Republicans are in danger of losing their majority in the House in the 2014 midterms, which would mean that the Speakership, which according to insiders is why Boehner follows the Tea Party's lead, would go back to a Democrat anyway. The party that the President doesn't belong to almost always gains seats in congress in midterm elections; the last time this was not the case was in 1998, when the voters punished Congressional Republicans for wasting everybody's time with a silly spectacle, the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Well, this shutdown is much worse than that impeachment, not just in my opinion but also according to all the public opinion polls. The Republicans hurt themselves by coming close to a shutdown in 2011, and they're hurting themselves much worse now. That's the one piece of very good news in all of this stupidity and insanity: it will all be over, in a very big way, at the very latest, when the next Congress is sworn in after the 2014 midterms, and in a bigger way the longer the shutdown lasts and the more default becomes a reality. I'm a Democrat, a partisan in a very big way, as regular readers of my blog have no doubt long since noticed. Still, in this case, concern for humanity in general far outweighs even my party loyalty, and so I hope that the people in the Republican party who, by virtue of contrast with the Tea Party, look like voices of reason, can soon somehow manage to point out the writing on the wall to John Boehner. The sooner the better. Put a clean bill up for a vote, Mr Speaker. Today. The way you should've done before the shutdown, thus preventing the shutdown. Things will only get worse for many people, most assuredly including you, until you do.
Next to the Tea Party, John Sununu is a moderate, centrist voice of reason and conciliation.
Under that banner headline is a big picture of Ted Cruz and John Boehner. Such a picture is not a reassuring sight under such a headline. Well, really, it's just about Boehner. Cruz can continue to act crazy, or to be crazy, if it's the case that it's not an act. It doesn't really matter much what Cruz does. As I've pointed out before on this blog, Boehner can end this shutdown any time he likes. Republican approval ratings plummet rapidly as he refuses to end the shutdown and the days go by. More and more pollsters are saying that, because of other things too but mostly because of this shutdown, the Republicans are in danger of losing their majority in the House in the 2014 midterms, which would mean that the Speakership, which according to insiders is why Boehner follows the Tea Party's lead, would go back to a Democrat anyway. The party that the President doesn't belong to almost always gains seats in congress in midterm elections; the last time this was not the case was in 1998, when the voters punished Congressional Republicans for wasting everybody's time with a silly spectacle, the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Well, this shutdown is much worse than that impeachment, not just in my opinion but also according to all the public opinion polls. The Republicans hurt themselves by coming close to a shutdown in 2011, and they're hurting themselves much worse now. That's the one piece of very good news in all of this stupidity and insanity: it will all be over, in a very big way, at the very latest, when the next Congress is sworn in after the 2014 midterms, and in a bigger way the longer the shutdown lasts and the more default becomes a reality. I'm a Democrat, a partisan in a very big way, as regular readers of my blog have no doubt long since noticed. Still, in this case, concern for humanity in general far outweighs even my party loyalty, and so I hope that the people in the Republican party who, by virtue of contrast with the Tea Party, look like voices of reason, can soon somehow manage to point out the writing on the wall to John Boehner. The sooner the better. Put a clean bill up for a vote, Mr Speaker. Today. The way you should've done before the shutdown, thus preventing the shutdown. Things will only get worse for many people, most assuredly including you, until you do.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
"Doo, doo, doo..."
Boehner's answer to questions about allowing a vote on a clean bill is Doo, doo, doo... I wonder, will "Doo, doo, doo..." be Boehner's legacy? Is that what he will be remembered for? I'm picturing posters and T-shirts with a drawing of Boehner wearing a toga and a laurel wreath on a balcony overlooking a Washington, DC in flames, plucking at a lyre and humming: "Doo, doo, doo..." Every minute that Boehner continues to prevent a vote on a clean bill, the harder it gets for me to accept the "conventional wisdom" about him, that he's actually quite smart, and only acts the way he does because of exceptional pressure from the TP. (There's nothing conventional about wisdom, there never has been anything conventional about it. If there were, every issue of TIME and USA Today would be jam-packed with wisdom.) Maybe it's time to try getting Boehner's attention by jingling shiny objects in front of him.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Ask Speaker Boehner To Let The House Vote On A Clean Bill
Most experts estimate that the effects of a default by the US government would dwarf those of the crisis of 2007-2008.
At the latest count, 22 Republican members of the House have said they would vote for a "clean bill," one which would allow the government to resume business and avoid that default. Without getting rid of or delaying the start of Obamacare. 22, or maybe 23, one Republican seems to be on the fence. Either way, the clean bill would pass with a few votes to spare if it were voted on right now. The number of Republicans in the House expressing support for a clean bill seems to just keep on rising. As does the economic chaos brought on merely by the thought of a impending US default.
A clean bill can pass just as soon as Speaker Boehner lets the House vote on it. Please contact the Speaker and ask him to allow a vote on a clean bill.
Contact information for people outside of Boehner's 8th District of Ohio: http://www.speaker.gov/Contact/
If you're in Ohio's 8th District: http://boehner.house.gov/contact/
At the latest count, 22 Republican members of the House have said they would vote for a "clean bill," one which would allow the government to resume business and avoid that default. Without getting rid of or delaying the start of Obamacare. 22, or maybe 23, one Republican seems to be on the fence. Either way, the clean bill would pass with a few votes to spare if it were voted on right now. The number of Republicans in the House expressing support for a clean bill seems to just keep on rising. As does the economic chaos brought on merely by the thought of a impending US default.
A clean bill can pass just as soon as Speaker Boehner lets the House vote on it. Please contact the Speaker and ask him to allow a vote on a clean bill.
Contact information for people outside of Boehner's 8th District of Ohio: http://www.speaker.gov/Contact/
If you're in Ohio's 8th District: http://boehner.house.gov/contact/
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Not Rocket Scientists
It's the morning of New Year's Day. In the wee hours the Senate passed a save-ourselves-from-this-totally-unnecessary-self-inflicted-financial-gunshot-in-the-foot bill. People are generally lounging around at home today. I'll bet C-SPAN 1, which covers the House of Representatives, is experiencing record-high viewership right now, as people coast-to-coast who have nothing else to do have woken to the dramatic news of the Senate passing the bill -- by a vote of 89-8 -- and now are waiting for the House to do something, but C-SPAN isn't in the House right now because the House hasn't convened. Boehner has announced he will brief House Republicans on the bill at 1PM. The House might not vote on the bill at all today. One thing the House Republicans have done today is officially announced that they were upset by the President being a big meanie in his public comments about them yesterday.
Keep playing to that shrinking base, guys. Keep ignoring your record-low, incredibly-tiny, still-sinking favorability ratings. On the one hand I'm irked by your inaction on this bill, but on the other hand, as a Democrat looking forward to the 2014 elections and beyond, I'm genuinely grateful for your help.
Keep playing to that shrinking base, guys. Keep ignoring your record-low, incredibly-tiny, still-sinking favorability ratings. On the one hand I'm irked by your inaction on this bill, but on the other hand, as a Democrat looking forward to the 2014 elections and beyond, I'm genuinely grateful for your help.
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