John Boehner, just now on CNN (video to follow):
"I was shaken by the events of last night. Unable to sleep, I went to the Lincoln Memorial to contemplate our nation's future. Abraham Lincoln, a great Republican president who was willing to put his career, and ultimately his life, on the line for the nation he so loved.
Lincoln, who in his second inaugural address wrote, "Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came."
I realized, as I read those words inscribed in marble, that we must do better. Indeed, that the party Abraham Lincoln served, and that I now serve, must do better.
We must do better than to be the party that has blocked unprecedented numbers of federal judgeships and other federal appointments. We must do better than to be the party that has used the filibuster in a way it was never intended to be used, and in numbers far greater than it has ever been used before.
We must do better than to allow a recession to ruin the lives of hard-working Americans when we could have passed comprehensive jobs legislation that would have put them back to work. And why didn't we act? Because we allowed an irrational hatred of the current president to stand in the way of anything that would cause his administration, and so the American people, to succeed.
We must do better than to allow corporations and their CEOs to dodge paying their fair share of taxes in offshore tax havens — a deeply unpatriotic thing to do — even as we allow them to invest limitless funds in winning elections.
We must do better than to try to prevent poorer Americans from receiving health insurance, just as we so foolishly tried, for far too many years, to prevent Medicare from giving other Americans the safety net they deserve.
We must do better than to allow the so-called Tea Party, whose very name is an affront to anyone who has read American history, to hold this party, and so this nation, hostage.
Finally, at the end of the day, we must do better than to govern on a philosophy of "Get the black man out of the White House."
Therefore, I will return to the Capitol today, where we will do our duty as members of Congress, and as Americans, and stop the madness. We will allow the great Americans who serve their country as government employees to do their jobs. We will allow the great government of this great nation to serve the people.
We will then sever our ties with the Tea Party and call on all Americans to serve a higher purpose, which is to secure the health and welfare of we, the people."
Just kidding. John Boehner would never say that.