How does this not end in tears for John Boehner?
The GOP civil war, which burst wide open with last week's
Homeland Security funding debacle, has now reached a fever pitch. The American Action Network, a super PAC tied to none other than House Speaker John Boehner,
is airing $400,000 worth of television ads, radio spots, and robocalls targeting "dozens" of Boehner's
fellow Republicans for their refusal to go along with rest of their party when it comes to paying for the department's operations.
What's even more amazing is the imagery AAN is using. If you were following politics a dozen years ago, you saw this exact kind of fearmongering with distressing frequency—except it was leveled at Democrats, in the form of mendacious claims that limp-wristed liberals were feckless wimps who wanted to offer "therapy and understanding" to Global Supervillain No. 1 Saddam Hussein and his creepy brother-in-law, Osama bin Laden.
To see the very same rhetoric deployed against Republicans is nothing short of stunning:
We've certainly come a long way around the bend, but it's almost impossible to overstate how delicious it is to watch Republicans feel the brunt of hysterical attacks that they're "putting our security at risk" because they're sending "the wrong message to our enemies"—complete with clips of black-masked jihadis armed with assault weapons, in case anyone was confused. They deserve this. Oh how they deserve this.
But here's the really crazy part: We still have no idea what Boehner's end-game is here. He's done everything he can to pretend like he hasn't promised Nancy Pelosi that he'll allow a vote on "clean" legislation that would fund Homeland Security through September, but he doesn't need to target dystopians like Tim Huelskamp to pass that bill. (All it'll take is a unified Democratic Party—not a problem in this case—plus a handful of GOP votes from the not-totally-insane wing.)
So why is Boehner's super PAC antagonizing the ultra-conservative nutters like this? What does he hope to gain? The bill that failed last week thanks to right-wing purity troll defections would have only kept the department in business for another three weeks. Even if Boehner could pass that bill now, what would be the point? He'd just be putting off his day of reckoning.
But when you watch the ad above, it sure as hell feels like that day of reckoning is already upon us.