Politico is reporting the Obama and Boehner's office had a deal for having his Job's speech on Wednesday, until Rush Limbaugh got involved.
And, according to the White House source, Boehner said “okay” to Daley’s request for the Wednesday evening date. (Asked for comment, Boehner’s press secretary, Brendan Buck, said he had nothing to add to his statement of Wednesday that read in part: “No one in the speaker’s office - not the speaker, not any staff - signed off on the date the White House announced today.”)
Then things quickly unraveled. It turned out not everyone was as sanguine as Boehner with the notion that a Democratic president was going to step on a Republican debate.
At 11:55 a.m. Wednesday, the White House tweeted the news about the joint session. “And then Rush Limbaugh beat Boehner up,” the source said.
The conservative talk show personality was in his familiar state of high dudgeon. “This is a pure campaign speech and to give it the imprimatur of a speech before a joint session of Congress, there’s no way, he doesn’t deserve that,” Limbaugh said. “Boehner’s got to say no. Now, whether he will, I have no clue.”
What I feel about this is mostly deja vu, because this last minute bait and switch routine is something we've seen before, when a Darryl Issa Staffer manipulated the meeting schedule with Elizabeth Warren, leading to Rep. Patrick McHenry calling her a Liar.
But it was the staffer who was the Liar.
As documented by Thinkprogress and Judicial Watch.
According to e-mail correspondence obtained from Judicial Watch, Haller oversaw the scheduling of the Warren testimony. According to Flavio Cumpiano, a congressional liaison for the CFPB, Haller reportedly changed the time of the hearing at the last minute, then misled Warren staffers by promising to end the testimony by 2:15 pm that day. In the emails, Haller denies ever agreeing to 2:15. But, Haller had been informed that Warren could not go beyond 2:15:
Haller, who is visible to the C-SPAN camera in a seat near McHenry, shakes his head at Warren when she said “we had an agreement for the time this hearing” (time stamp 00:55). Watch here:
Haller it turns out is a former Goldman Sachs Lobbyist, who not long ago was pushing hard to either neuter or repeal the Dodd-Frank Bill including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Elizabeth Warren originally conceived, and at one point, was slated to run if not for Rabid Republican Opposition.
So now Beohner has taken a page from McHenry's book, at the direct behest of Limbaugh.
Now, we really know whose running the Republican Party.
And in the end they may have done something they really didn't want to do... piss off the President.
The White House was not pleased. In reality, it believed, Congress really had never gone out of session, a parliamentary move that blocked Obama from making recess appointments. “And they had to arrange security?” the White House source scoffed. “As if they couldn’t do that! This was a political thing, a tea party thing, a Rush Limbaugh thing. They were all giving Boehner gas.”
They know what this was really all about. And it's true, just as Limbaugh alleges, if Congress doesn't implement his jobs Plan - the President Plans to Use that as a Talking Point and Run On It.
Moving forward, my basic attitude is we know what to do. I'll be putting forward, when they come back in September, a very specific plan to boost the economy, to create jobs, and to control our deficit. And my attitude is, get it done. (Applause.) And if they don’t get it done, then we’ll be running against a Congress that’s not doing anything for the American people, and the choice will be very stark and will be very clear.
Get it Done. And if you don't, I'll make you Eat It.
I'm thinking they really shouldn't have pissed him off on this.
Vyan
Vyan