John Boehner has a good reason
for that sad face.
While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell plots to take over the Senate, House Majority Leader John Boehner is just trying to hold his shit together. And that, in turn, makes life hard for McConnell.
[N]ow that the calendar’s mostly clear of “must-do” items, a series of smaller imbroglios has exposed the fact that Boehner’s members can’t unite behind even the simplest, most politically innocuous measures. Now it’s reached the point where even Senate Republicans are outwardly admitting that their House counterparts don’t have their act together.
On Thursday, the Senate passed a modest House bill aimed at loosening rules restricting capital formation. Senate Democrats and Republicans had hoped to be able to amend it to raise the U.S. export/import bank’s $100 billion loan limit. This is a big deal for powerful Republican interest groups, including the Chamber of Commerce. But a significant faction of House Republicans view the bank as a distorter of the free market and are vehemently opposed. That forced Senate Republicans to ride to Boehner’s rescue and vote the measure down.
Capital formation rules? That's small potatoes. Where Boehner's real nightmare lies is in the transportation bill, where, as
Laura Clawson says, "Boehner can't even get his own caucus together enough to vote for this far-right bill—because many Republican House members don't think it's radical enough."
This is a bill that actually could create some jobs. Beyond that, it's one of those "must-pass" items. Boehner has had to resort, once again, to a temporary funding measure to try to find a way to make his caucus function, but with every bill he has to end up giving in on (debt ceiling, payroll tax cut extension) the more restless his nativists become.
Laura made another great point regarding this bill: "if a body as dysfunctional as the Senate can pass something, it's a truly remarkable statement if the House can't follow suit." Just watch the House approval numbers plummet in the coming months, while the majority caucus actively opposes creating jobs and fixing roads and bridges. That's a scenario that does a plotting Mitch McConnell very little good.