Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner has a new book coming out entitled “On The House: A Washington Memoir”. In an article Boehner put together for Politico.com, Boehner gives the world a glimpse into his upcoming book. In the article, Boehner seems to be trying to sell the idea that he was a normal Republican politician, just trying to do his job, when suddenly in 2011, all of these crazy wackos took over the Republican party:
Retaking control of the House of Representatives put me in line to be the next Speaker of the House over the largest freshman Republican class in history: 87 newly elected members of the GOP. Since I was presiding over a large group of people who’d never sat in Congress, I felt I owed them a little tutorial on governing. I had to explain how to actually get things done. A lot of that went straight through the ears of most of them, especially the ones who didn’t have brains that got in the way. Incrementalism? Compromise? That wasn’t their thing. A lot of them wanted to blow up Washington. That’s why they thought they were elected.
Some of them, well, you could tell they weren’t paying attention because they were just thinking of how to fundraise off of outrage or how they could get on Hannity that night. Ronald Reagan used to say something to the effect that if I get 80 or 90 percent of what I want, that’s a win. These guys wanted 100 percent every time. In fact, I don’t think that would satisfy them, because they didn’t really want legislative victories. They wanted wedge issues and conspiracies and crusades.
To them, my talk of trying to get anything done made me a sellout, a dupe of the Democrats, and a traitor. Some of them had me in their sights from day one. They saw me as much of an “enemy” as the guy in the White House. Me, a guy who had come to the top of the leadership by exposing corruption and pushing conservative ideas. Now I was a “liberal collaborator.” So that took some getting used to. What I also had not anticipated was the extent to which this new crowd hated—and I mean hated—Barack Obama.
I guess that John Boehner wants us to feel sorry for him. I guess he wants everyone to think that “Here was a guy who rose to the top simply by exposing corruption and pushing Conservative ideas. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, he had had to deal with all of these new crazy Republicans that were elected in 2010.” Yeah, that’s not exactly what happened.
For more than 100 years, the Republican Party has been lying its ass off, and for more than 50 years, the Republican party has drenched itself in bigotry-- including racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia--and now, in Boehner’s new book, he acts like Republican craziness only magically appeared in 2010. Yet, John Boehner was first elected to Congress in 1990, when George H.W. Bush was still President. Back then, Boehner pushed the lies of Supply Side Economics, the lies of “Too Much Government Regulation”, and he pushed all the rest of that Reagan nonsense. In 1994, he was one of the architects of the pack of lies and nonsense known as the “Contract With America”. Back then, he never complained about all of the lies that were told about Bill Clinton’s healthcare initiative.
In the years after 1994, Boehner never complained when Newt Gingrich repeatedly threatened to shut down government and hurt Americans in order to get his way. He also never complained about all of the lies that were being told on Talk Radio by people like Rush Limbaugh, and he never complained about the lies that were told by Fox News when it sprang to life in the second half of the 1990s. In fact, Boehner told many of the same lies that Limbaugh and Fox News were telling back then.
Year after year, the lies told on TV and Radio by Republican talking heads got worse, and worse, and still Boehner never complained about the lies, never corrected the lies, and never lifted a finger to try and rein in what was happening. It was only when all of the lies made *his* life harder, starting in 2011, when a whole pack of lies got a bunch of idiots elected, that he started to have a problem with them.
Sorry John Boehner, you have a lot more to do with the rise of craziness in the Republican party than most Americans. Stop pretending that you were some kind of “normal Republican” while this craziness happened. You embraced the lying Republican culture in the 90s and the 2000s as much as anyone while the lies got worse and worse. When, in the 2010s, the lies got even worse, only then did you start to realize how bad things had gotten, but it was only because the lies were hurting you. You, John Boehner helped the lies to get to that level by supporting the lying machine for decades up until that point. If you are looking for someone to blame, I suggest that you start by looking in the mirror.