TPM's Brian Beutler:
Reflecting on Tuesday's House passage of stopgap legislation to keep the government open for three weeks, House Speaker John Boehner suggested that the path to keeping the federal government running over the long term will require a compromise with Democrats -- an acknowledgment that won't sit well with conservatives in his party.
At a Wednesday job creation forum hosted by the Republican leadership, I asked Boehner whether Democrats have a point when they note that he needs their votes to fund the government. His first reaction since the vote revealed his bind, and suggests he's not throwing in his lot with the Tea Party. "Let me remind you that Republicans control one-half of one-third of our government," Boehner said. "It's never been lost on me that because we only control the House there are a lot of other players that we need to work with in order to come to any agreement to keep the government open."
Boehner's language was sufficiently vague that anything is still possible, but it is a hint that he is finally coming to grips with the fact that the only way to prevent a government shutdown is to move forward without tea party Republicans.
Yesterday's passage of a stop-gap funding bill made that clear: thanks to 54 tea party defectors, Republicans were only able to deliver 186 votes, leaving them 32 shy of the needed majority. They ended up getting 85 votes from Democrats. The vote showed that that to avoid a government shutdown, Boehner must agree to a compromise that can win enough support from Democrats to actually pass the House, and that will mean leaving GOP hardliners on the sideline.
With polling showing that tea party supporters want to see a government shutdown even though the vast majority of Americans think it would be a bad thing to happen, Boehner finds himself in a tough spot. Now, based on what he told Beutler, it seems that he might be getting ready to make the smart choice, which is to sit down with Democrats and work out a true compromise.