Thank heavens for John Boehner. He has the misfortune of leading the Republicans whose intransigence kept them from agreeing to President Obama's big plan to fix the deficit - over $3 trillion in spending cuts without any discernable revenue increases.
Now Obama's standing up sounding uncharacteristically tough and angry in his press briefing, but the fact is that we narrowly escaped giving the Republicans everything they wanted while we Democrats, once again, got nothing. The only explanation is that there are Republicans who simply won't vote for raising the debt ceiling, or won't vote for a deal that doesn't contain the dismantling of Medicare and Social Security. In either case, the President and the Democrats were willing to compromise in a way that would demoralize their constituency but Boehner and his co-horts couldn't bring themselves to say yes. Don't get too hopeful, however, they can still change their minds.