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Tennessee lawmakers express mixed feelings on Boehner resignation
Conservative Republicans may have been glad when U.S. House Speaker John Boehner announced Friday he would step down on Oct. 30, but his decision regrettably doesn't smooth the way for more conservative governance.
Americans thought they were voting for a more conservative Congress in the off-year elections of 2010 and 2014, but those GOP members still must agree among themselves on a budget, tussle with increasingly far left Democrats and live under the most liberal Democrat president the country has ever elected.
Boehner, a 13-term representative from Ohio, tried to walk the line in his four-plus years as speaker between the younger, more firebrand conservatives elected in the last four years and the pragmatic GOP members who understand all agreements involve some measure of compromise.
But that line never endeared him to the more conservative members of the House or to the GOP electorate, which believed him weak and too interested in working with President Obama.
The latest scuffle highlights this difficulty. While he and most Americans are sickened by the release of Planned Parenthood videos that discuss the sale of aborted baby parts, he is stuck between the demands of conservatives to defund the organization in any legislation to keep the government operating and the need to pass such budget legislation in order that his party appear able to govern.
Undoubtedly, he fully understands the principle of uniting against an organization in which aborted fetuses are so callously disregarded but also recognizes how the left-leaning media is quick to blame Republicans for any government shutdown (even though it always takes two parties to tango) and thus influence future votes.
The reaction to Boehner's decision by Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also showed what any Republican speaker is up against.
"Let us hope the Republican majority learns the right lesson from his resignation," he said, "to work with Democrats in a constructive way, rather than let a handful of extreme right-wingers dictate his party's policy."
In other words, Republicans just need to compromise with Democrats; yet, the opposite is never suggested.
Boehner's expect successor, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is perhaps only marginally more conservative, so the best way to truly move the needle to the right is to elect a Republican president in 2016 and a veto-proof majority along with it.