No Accountability Moment for Boehner?
I wouldn’t presume to tell the House GOP caucus what to do, but what kind of crazy people would consider keeping John Boehner on as leader? It’s not like he has some great record of leading the caucus to electoral successes, and that you need to put the big losses of 2006 and 2008 in that light. All he’s ever done is lead his colleagues to defeat. Are those defeats all his fault? Of course not. But he’s hardly been some kind of font of innovative thinking.
At a minimum, sometimes a symbolic “we’re dumping the leader and going in a new direction” kind of moment can at least help clear the air and demonstrate that you understand you lost. And real leaders need to take responsibility for failures that happen under their watch. You know, personal responsibility, etc.
40 Responses to “No Accountability Moment for Boehner?”
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November 5th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
It’s not like he has some great record of leading the caucus to electoral successes, and that you need to put the big losses of 2006 and 2008 in that light. All he’s ever done is lead his colleagues to defeat.
He was made the leader after 2006, when Hastert got the boot. Typically House leadership gets more than one try.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Well, of course your post is concern-trolling, as is my comment, since we’re both Democrats. So there’s no reason to think we have any particular insight into how to improve the Republican Party.
However, I would echo what “right” said and also say that there are good arguments for not doing anything at all immediately after a horrid loss. If the GOP money men are dissatisfied with Boehner, it’s certainly not the end of the world if they want to wait a little while to figure out what direction they want to go when he’s gone.
I don’t remember what I thought the Democratic party needed to do after 2004, but I doubt it was along the lines of “wishy-washily tread water until you win back the majority in 2006, then have a protracted primary fight between the Clintons and this new guy Barack Obama, before ultimately nominating Obama and electing him after a campaign focused almost exclusively on ambitious left-of-center domestic policy goals.”
That probably would have seemed at the time to be a hopelessly optimistic plan, but as it turns out, it was a lot better than “FIRE EVERYBODY!!!1!!1!”
APS
November 5th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
I think he’s just chicken shit.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Hopefully Ted Stevens takes control of the GOP and moves the party closer to the gun wielding, drug abusing, airplane flying, resource wealth distributing brand of conservatism so popular up here.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
The “Personal Responsibility” phrase is only operative for brown people and families with household income under $65,000.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Damn, such a great straight line, and Rlaf beat me to the riposte.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
what kind of crazy people would consider keeping John Boehner on as leader?
Boner-man has been extremely good at orchestrating pre-school temper tantrums in the House, and one presumes that House GOP caucus is not yet ready to put government by hissyfit behind it.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
At a minimum, sometimes a symbolic “we’re dumping the leader and going in a new direction” kind of moment can at least help clear the air and demonstrate that you understand you lost.
See: Phillip Fulmer, UT; Tommy Bowden, Clemson; Mike Nolan, San Fran. 49ers; Scott Linehan, St. Louis Rams
November 5th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Yeah, maybe, but who replaces him? Who’s the fresh new face of the Republican Party? Jindal and Palin are governors.
November 5th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
That guy looks like he never met a tanning bed he didn’t like.
November 5th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
He’s awful. He’s horrible.
He’s perfect.
Here’s hoping the republicans don’t give up on Boehner.
Then again, they might have somebody worse?
November 5th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Yeah, maybe, but who replaces him? Who’s the fresh new face of the Republican Party? Jindal and Palin are governors.
Cantor of Virginia and Flake of Arizona have been getting some buzz lately. Cantor was on the short list for McCain VP and just put his hat in the ring for Minority Whip. (or maybe caucus chairman)
November 5th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Are any of the leaders-in-waiting any more willing to admit defeat and change strategy? Or is replacing Boehner just rearranging the deck chairs of the party?
November 5th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Well, of course your post is concern-trolling, as is my comment, since we’re both Democrats. So there’s no reason to think we have any particular insight into how to improve the Republican Party.
No, we do have a good and useful insight–the Republicans need to abandon the crazies and move to the left. Of course, the Reupblicans up until Tuesday night were telling us we needed to abandon our crazies (less crazy than theirs, although they don’t see it that way) and move to the right, but the key difference is–we’re right and they’re wrong.
November 5th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
The “Personal Responsibility” phrase is only operative for brown people
Boehner is a brown person. Just look at that picture.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
“That guy looks like he never met a tanning bed he didn’t like.”
@SAO – Boner has a big book of discount coupons for DC Tan & Manicure. Only doles them out to his BFFs – that’s why he’s topdog.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
What a snake! He’s so smooth he’s got everyone pronouncing his name bayner.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
My prediction: Boehner stays, but Cantor gets Minority Whip. Cantor got a lot of cred with the base for opposing the bailout. After the Republicans lose in 2010, Cantor of the “real” Virginia, will become the Minority Leader.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
The GOP needs to purge itself of all the little schmucks who learned politics under Newt Gingrich. They’re uniformly immature, destructive creeps.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
The GOP needs to purge itself of all the little schmucks who learned politics under Newt Gingrich. They’re uniformly immature, destructive creeps.
I really, really wish Newt was still in congress this year so that he could have been humiliated in the election.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:40 am
The Democrats changed leaders in the House and Senate after 2004. The new leaders were an improvement. The old ones weren’t horrible, the Democrats took back the Senate briefly in 2002 and beat the Republicans in the popular vote for the House at least once wheen Gephardt was leader.
Usually the presidential party loses seats in the midterms, and a number of Democrats who one this year won in deep red districts and would have problems getting reelected even if the Obama administration is popular. So the Republicans should expect to gain seats in 2010, if not win back the whole thing. They also should benefit from a dead cat bounce if nothing else. If they don’t gain seats, then they should bump Boehner. Redistricting will help them in 2004 ironically because they are doing so badly in the Northeast, right now it will be impossible to avoid the one lost seat from Massachussetts, the two from New York and probably the one from Pennsylvania being anything but Democratic held.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:59 am
They don’t want to make him cry.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:29 am
All the way to the end to see merl beat me to it.
I don’t know that redistricting necessarily benefits the GOP. One problem with gerrymandering the hell out of a large number of states is that even a return to a fairer redistricting is going to hurt you … even if Ohio loses one, its easily possible for Republicans to lose three seats … the Lakefront-East gerrymander in the Northeast, where Youngstown in the east and Tim Ryan’s seat and Kent State in the west are pulled into one seat to allow two Republican leaning seats to exist (but Boccieri captured one of them, so a fair redistricting will only bring one up for loss) … the “down the drain” gerrymander in Columbus, splitting Columbus into three parts … the Lake-Front-West gerrymander … the gerrymander in Cincinatti that subdivides the Democratic vote into two and a bit districts to kill it off.
A rationalization of the districts in Ohio will cost the Republicans from two to four seats. An aggressively partisan gerrymander in the reverse direction would cost more.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Democrats will control redistricting in Ohio in 2 years – Boehner’s district is one of 3 republican districts that carved up democratic Montgomery county (Dayton). I predict he will find himself fighting for his life against another local republican (Mike Turner?) when the new lines are drawn. Also, I would like to apologize to the rest of the electorate for his presence on the political landscape – he is a true political hack.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:21 am
I think it shows that the Republicans don’t currently see any credible path to power. There is no reason to switch leaders now, since the new one will just face failure. When they see some plausible agenda to either recover the majority, or at least make gains, they’ll switch leaders.
Boehner is unpopular enough that they want him to suffer the first few months of the Obama administration. Much of Obama’s agenda will pass congress in the first three months and there isn’t anything the house Republicans can do. After that, they’ll blame Boehner for impotent opposition and dump him. The new leader will make a boogeyman out of one or more of Obama’s policies and try to whip up popular support of the party that way.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Ed said:
“The Democrats changed leaders in the House and Senate after 2004.”
Not true in any meaningful sense. The Dems proactively changed leadership in the House after 2002 – Dick Gephart was ousted and Pelosi was promoted from Whip to Leader, with Steny Hoyer filling the spot behind her.
After 2004, Harry Reid was promoted from Whip to Leader after Tom Daschle lost his seat to John Thune.
To the degree that it was possible for them to do so, the Dems largely stayed the course after 2004.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Is it true that Adam Putnam is stepping down from his leadership position? From what I observed of him on the floor, he looked to be extraordinarily articulate and acute–a real comer, a future Senator or presidential candidate. Why are they letting him return to the back benches?
Does he maybe want to get out of the leadership so that he can position himself better to run for the Senate?
November 6th, 2008 at 10:42 am
The kind of crazy people who live in my own metropolitan area, that’s who. Same kind of crazy people who overwhelmingly went for Bush in 2004, and went ever bigger for McCain in 2008, as if these last wretched years never happened.
Thankfully, I live in the OH-2 congressional district, where we’re only crazy enough to re-elect Jean “Patriotic Scrunchie” Schmidt. Our Dem candidate pretty much sucked, and I’m looking forward to us finding a much better one for 2010, because Schmidt is beatable, we just have to offer a better alternative.
Silver lining? My Ohio county, Hamilton, which contains the city of Cincinnati, went Democratic for the first time since LBJ, and from what I’m reading, it was the biggest county “flip” from red-to-blue in the entire NATION. So there’s good and bad out of southwestern Ohio these days!
November 6th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I used to be a constituent of Boehner’s . . . I was never happy about him, but that’s another story.
But who do the Republicans have to replace him? Believe it or not, he was a “moderate” in the Republican sense of the word. For example, he supported Bush’s education initiatives — my current Republican Rep, Mike Pence, did not.
I would have loved to see the Republican party able to capture the moment by having an African-American Representative like J.C. Watts assume leadership at this time. Republicans can be quite good at symbolism. But Watts no longer serves in Congress, and it speaks volumes that there are no African-Americans currently in their caucus.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Glentok @24,
The Democrats now are in control of the Ohio State House, but the Republicans firmly control the State Senate, so Democrats will not have a totally free hand in redistricting. By the way, there are two, not three Congressional districts that include parts of Montgomery County: the 3rd and the 8th.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:47 am
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