Enter
AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE
the “Hastert Rule” — which
holds that the speaker can’t bring
anything to the floor for a vote
without first securing a “majority of the majority” — into official
House GOP dogma.
All of this brought Boehner to
his lowest point last week, when
he vented his frustrations at reporters, saying, “Do you have an
idea? They’ll just shoot it down
anyway.” So now, as The New
Republic’s Noam Scheiber posits, Boehner might just let his
colleagues take aim at their own
collective foot.
Back in March, Scheiber
mapped out the strategy that
Boehner’s been using to move
important business through the
House and survive — both as
a House speaker and as a guy
tasked with keeping his party’s
standing from collapsing. It goes
something like this:
First Boehner stakes out a position so extreme or impractical
that he effectively marginalizes
himself from any negotiation
with Democrats. At that point,
Democrats begin to bargain
with Boehner’s Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell. Once
they strike a deal, it passes the
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
Senate with overwhelming support. This is the cue to Boehner
to troop before his caucus and
lament that they fought the
good fight for as long as they
could, but now even their fellow
Republicans have turned on
them. If it is their will to hold
out, then Boehner will obey it.
(Always best to give crazy people the illusion of agency.) But
he can no longer in good faith
recommend this path. Invariably, the lunatics fold.
But with those same lunatics in
HUFFINGTON
09.22.13
The New
Republic’s
Noam
Scheiber
posits that
Boehner
strategizes
with Senate
Minority
Leader Mitch
McConnell
(above)
to move
business
through the
House.