[BREAKING] Boehber will resign from Congress at end of Oct.

Ramifications?

 

The best thing I can think to say about Boehner is that he's a survivor.

In this case, he thought it better to resign before being deposed.

 

You could tell that the pope had a profound affect on him. I'm not saying this is why he is resigning, but I wouldn't put it past him.

Good luck John!

 

Apparently he admitted as much privately.

I actually have some respect for Boehner on his way out. He looked himself in the mirror and asked himself whether he wanted to be part of a Republican party that was getting out of control and decided "no." He had gone far enough down this road, probably thinking that the tea party phase would pass.

Democrats certainly shouldn't celebrate this. Boehner wanted badly to work with the President and was handcuffed by his party. He tried to work a "grand bargain" privately and then backed down in fear of his own party. The next speaker likely will be more hardline than Boehner was. I was optimistic that once we got through the Obama presidency a Boehner and McConnell led Congress would work to compromise. Boehner's private outright refusal to do a government shutdown again has hurt him with a lot of the base. God help us with the next one...

 

Join the club...

 

I think we'll got a solid answer on the direction of the Republican Party with this election. Democrats should just stay the hell out and don't even bother to try and tamper with the vote. The best thing for the country is for Republicans to find some sort of consensus on a speaker.

It was clear that Boehner wasn't that guy. Boehner was a holdover from older Republican leadership and wasn't going to be the guy to manage the Republican caucus. His tactics to control the tea party seemed really old school and out of date. No one cares if you threaten committee assignments anymore now that earmarks are dead and outside groups are spending so freely in elections.

At some point a new leader either needs to be full on tea party or he/she needs to flat out ignore them and start regularly holding coalition votes with Democrats on must pass legislation. This stupid half way approach of simultaneously criticizing the extremists while requiring their vote just led to perpetual gridlock.

 

I don't respect Boehner precisely because he "backed down in fear". Walking away from the grand bargain is just one example.

The next speaker being hardline won't hurt the Dems at all. Obama is a lame duck and nothing substantial will be affected until 2017 anyway. The GOP-led House can froth at the mouth all it wants. Wouldn't have been any different if Boehner stayed and kept pretending.

I do agree a potential government shutdown is scary but it would actually help the Dems in 2016. Republicans seem determined to prove they cannot govern.

 

Feel bad for the guy.

How can you wake up every morning with respect for yourself knowing you are the face of everything that is wrong with this country.

 

More shut downs would only lead to more republicans losing their jobs mext election. I do think that these kamikaze tea party folks don't care about getting re-elected like career politicians of the past. They will destroy the GOP for the whole country to see.

 

Boehner was a speaker from a different era. He was simply unequipped to manage this new Republican caucus. All of the traditional mechanisms to control the caucus fell apart thanks to rule changes, unlimited PAC spending and a new series of legislators who frankly didn't care about governing anymore.

He never figured out the formula to govern and every time he attempted something, he had to back off because he would get non-traditional responses. For example, he tried to cut off dissent by stripping committee assignments and every time he had to back off because the tea party wing would band together and threaten to form an insurrection. The rules of the game have changed and Boehner never figured this out.

 

Well, this will get worse before it gets better.

 

Ugh, Pope Francis broke Boehner. Good job, Jorge!

 

Vegas put out any odds yet on who will replace him? I got $100 on old white guy.

 

A moral conscience will get you right every time.

 

Neither should Americans, generally. We have a two party system where one of the parties has decided to bow out of the process by acting like a petulant child. I have zero faith in the American political system at this point.

I consider myself a moderate and vote both sides frequently. I feel like there's not even a choice anymore.

 

Boehner finally can relax. American, on the other hand... if the House go extreme right, I guess we are in for more shutdowns showdown, cross the debt ceiling, more voting for the purpose of outrage voting... or as the Pope put it yesterday, processing space instead of initiating processes.

 

A gridlocked Congress preserves the gains the 1% paid for over the last 30 years. There will be no meaningful legislation passed for a decade. Replacing Boehner with a more tea-partyrific Speaker just seals the deal.

victory!

unless it fuels the Sanders/Warren/Pope Populist explosion that seems to be forming up. They will have to win some Congressional elections against the money machine. They need a charismatic reformist Christian figurehead though (since waiting on a secular humanist to be elected is probably 20 more years out).

-every action has an equal and opposite reaction-

 

There is one hell of a political war on the horizon. The establishment Republicans vs the new cuckoo Ted Cruz Republicans.