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

Boehner has been a very weak speaker. He has rubber-stamped everything Obama has wanted. His leaving is a good thing,. Hopefully they will elect a strong Speaker of the House.

 

The crazy part of the speaker's election is that all of the precedents for these type of things are ruined. Normally senior house leaders would decide amongst themselves and their decided candidate would become speaker. Now you're going to have all kinds of jockeying and it will be a test to see how the Republicans will organize.

The Democrats will be the wild card. In Texas, the tea party has basically been blocked from the house leadership because the Democrats are propping up Joe Straus. I suspect the Democrats in the US house will stay out of it and just vote for Pelosi but it will be interesting to see how they end up voting.

 

I found John Boehner to be very weak. He was unable to stand up to the crazies in his party. He caved to them way too much and focused on ridiculous initiatives and budgets that just were not useful.

Republicans need to control the Tea Party as 1/3 of the majority congressional party should not be dictating American government.

1/3 of 1/2 of a house of 1/2 of congress of 1/3 of the branches.

1//36 of the party held the other 35/36th hostage. What a shame.


What's most interesting is that he basically held the credit of the U.S. hostage as well as another gov't shutdown - he was more rigid than Gingrich - and yet his part still threw him under the bus. I couldn't stand the guy but one has to wonder if they put a wing-nut in power - the gov't and our credit are going to be in big trouble.

Foolish to play chicken a year before the election.

 

Absolutely no context. It was just a bad metaphor

 

Interesting comments. About Straus, sounds like he can a la carte his decisions under a centrist banner.

 

we have record tax revenues now

 

Yes - and the deficit has dropped substantially over the last 5 years too.

Still, it's amusing that your goal is smaller government, and you consider the one speaker in all of US history to actually have cut government spending to be the failure, while holding up Gingrich as some kind of a hero. Just the standard GOP deification of previous heroes - you'd have hated Gingrich's approach if he was speaker today.

 

Thanks Obama?

 

So Boner has given up trying to lead an out of control House stuffed with GOP extremists. Not much of a surprise when you think about it. The surprise is that he lasted as long as he did. The absurd situation must have been driving him crazy, with reasonable, intelligent Republicans dropping like flies.

 

I strongly doubt the Democrats will mess with the vote for a speaker. It sets a really terrible precedent that is unnecessary. The party in the majority should have the privilege of selecting the speaker of the house. This should be a question for Republicans.

As for Straus, his power has declined substantially since he got elected in 2008. He's more reliant than ever on Democrats voting for him (which is a dangerous position to be in) and all of his closest allies have retired. He used to be able to control all the committees via loyal allies. Those allies are rapidly leaving the House and their replacements usually end up in the tea party.

Also it used to be that Democrats more or less had a veto in the Texas Senate via the 2/3 rule. That's gone now so the Senate can basically force the House's hand now with crazy legislation. Straus is in a really bad spot now. At some point the Republicans will finally turn on him and vote together on a new speaker but it might be a few more years.

 

There's the key right there.

 

Then this happened

Obama On Track To Completely Eliminate Deficit By 2017

 

How exactly does the Speaker vote work? Does the entire House vote on it? If the GOP has 2 candidates (McCarthy and some crazy person) and they split the votes because they are too incompetent to support one person, while all the Dems vote for Pelosi, what happens?

 

Speakers in the US house require a majority vote. Typically each party will nominate a candidate but the nominations dont mean anything since representatives are free to vote for whoever they want.

What almost happened with Boehner in the past was that Republicans would threaten to defect and create a situation where there wasn't a majority voting for Boehner anymore.

Pelosi can only win if she can get a majority which is impossible for her. We'll just end up with multiple ballot elections until Republicans can come to a consensus or a coalition candidate is elected (with Democratic and Republican votes)

However, it would be unprecedented for the Democrats to tamper and vote for a Republican. Plus any Republican who made a deal with the Democrats would be instantly crucified by the right wing media.

With that said, we haven't had a contested election for speaker since the 1920s so everything is pretty much unprecedented at this point.

 

This seems like a bit of a trainwreck waiting to happen. McCarthy seems to be the universal consensus, but he's no different than Boehner, so I'm not sure why the crazies would support him if they were going to overthrow Boehner. And the majority of the conference that supports Boehner is not going to go out and support a crazy.

 

Even Eric Cantor calling everyone crazy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/o...region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0


But somewhere along the road, a number of voices on the right began demanding that the Republican Congress not only block Mr. Obama’s agenda but enact a reversal of his policies. They took to the airwaves and the Internet and pronounced that congressional Republicans could undo the president’s agenda — with him still in office, mind you — and enact into law a conservative vision for government, without compromise.

Strangely, according to these voices, the only reason that was not occurring had nothing to do with the fact that the president was unlikely to repeal his own laws, or that under the Constitution, absent the assent of the president or two-thirds of both houses of Congress, you cannot make law. The problem was a lack of will on the part of congressional Republican leaders.

Now we see that these same voices have turned to the threat of a government shutdown or a default on the debt as the means by which we can force President Obama to agree to their demands. I wonder what they would have said, if during the last two years of President Bush’s term, the Democratic congressional majority had tried something similar.

The tragedy here is that these voices have not been honest with our fellow conservatives. They have not been honest about what can be accomplished when your party controls Congress, but not the White House. As a result we missed chances to achieve important policies for the good of the country.

The response I often hear to these points is: “Well, Republicans at least need to fight.” On this I agree. It is imperative that we fight for what we believe in. But we should fight smartly. I have never heard of a football team that won by throwing only Hail Mary passes, yet that is what is being demanded of Republican leaders today.

 

The Republican implosion would be hilarious to watch if it didn't threaten to crater the U.S. and global economy when the crazies try to shutdown the government and default on the debt.

 

Shame on him for only having the courage to say this now instead of when he was complicit in catering to this rapid, mouth-breathing electorate for years.

 

Even Eric Cantor?!?!?! no way!!!!!