Expect these confused looks to linger.
House Speaker John Boehner's
shocking resignation on the cusp of a government shutdown leaves a great deal up in the air, starting with what happens to government on October 1.
Note that Boehner will remain in office until October 30, which means he will shepherd through whatever plan leadership has decided upon to get it done. At this point, he could leave the hard-liners in the dust and work with the rest of his conference and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and pass his clean stop-gap, short-term funding bill. He's taking the fall, then, and the subsequent speaker—early consensus says it will be Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy—isn't tainted. Except if it is McCarthy, he's part of the team that created this "show vote" that the problem children are so upset about. So it's not a given that we'll avoid a shutdown.
Then, if we do and Boehner leaves at the end of October, there's still a total shit show of shutdown and catastrophe possibilities: long-term funding, a long-term transportation bill, and the mac daddy—the debt ceiling. So what happens now in his leadership team will play out in how all of that comes down sometime probably in November. You'd like to think that he's thought all that through, but since he reportedly didn't even give advanced notice to McCarthy that he was resigning, I don't think you can count on him having thought that through.
There's also the possibility that it won't be so easy to decide on McCarthy as the next speaker and there will be a real food fight. Some of the most extreme of the extremists seem to think they've got the goods, so you could see continued splintering and ongoing drama there. If McCarthy has to make promises to quell that, expect there not to be a whole lot of change in how the House is being run.
And just a thought about the other side of the Hill. Ted Cruz has a scalp now, since it's been his ongoing machinations with the House hardliners that has led to this. So, Mitch McConnell, watch your back.