Boehner's Boner

John Boehner thought he would pull a fast one on President Obama and proposed a bill that would raise taxes only on people who make more than a million bucks a year. He thought its passage in the House would ensure that he would get his way, by forcing the president and the Senate to take it or leave it.

Unfortunately, the Brutuses in the Republican House caucus stabbed Boehner in the back. They refused to back his play and Boehner was forced to withdraw his own bill.

One interesting aspect of this is the reaction of certain pundits. I don't read a lot of conservatives because they generally spend all their time ignoring reality, circling the wagons, repeating talking points cooked up at the Wednesday meeting, and finding lame excuses for whatever nonsense the Republican Party spews out.

But recently some conservatives have started to wake up. Joe Scarborough did so by calling for gun control in the wake of Newtown. And Jennifer Rubin called Republicans in the House to account in the Washington Post. She ended her most recent piece with these paragraphs:

The world of Heritage Action Network, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and the other all-or-nothing hard-liners in the conservative media have encouraged and will delight in this sort of fiasco. That said, the fault lies with the spineless members who think they’ll escape blame if they don’t vote for any measure. That is folly, not to mention political cowardice. To govern is to choose, and they apparently can do neither.

This sort of display suggests Republicans are not capable of governing. What was an argument by Democrats (They are unreasonable! They only care for the rich!) is now a political reality.

When I posed the question “What next?” to several senior Republicans, the answer came back, ” I really don’t know” or “Good question.” What we do know is that House Republicans may have confirmed the good judgment of the American people in keeping divided government. Goodness knows none of these people can be trusted.

The reaction from right-wingers in the reader comments was immediate and irate. Once an ever-reliable pillar of Republican dogma, Rubin had now been branded as a RINO. She is a heretic, a leper, an outcast unclean. The conservative tribe must eject her and anyone who dares break with the orthodoxy dictated by the moneyed overlords.

Thus the Republican Party continues to hack itself to pieces, alienating everyone who has an ounce of integrity and honesty. At this rate it will only be a few years until it joins the Whigs and the Federalist Party, and consists solely of Jim DeMint, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Grover Norquist, the Koch Brothers and Wayne LaPierre. And their piles and piles of money.