With it looking like he will be the next leader of the Senate as the result of his party’s sweeping win in Tuesday’s mid term election, Senate Mitch McConnell can afford to employ a long standing Senate tradition of statesmenship in his comments over the last few day regarding his attitude towards working with the President and the Democrats in the Senate once the Republicans take over the Senate in a few months by saying things like:
“We ought to start with the view that maybe there are things we can agree on to make progress for the country.?
Not so John Boehner.
Was it really just Sept 16, less than two months ago, that the Republican Speaker of the House actually criticized members of his own party under his speakership when he was reported saying to the International Franchise Association’s Public Affairs Conference
?“You might notice I have a few knuckleheads in my conference”.
The context of those remarks where about his own inability to wrangle votes from his members to pass bills he wants passed. ?Something relatively common, although not easy, for previous House Speakers.
He went onto say some fifty odd days ago:
“On any given day, 16 of my members decide they’re going to go this way, and all the sudden I have nothing”. ?He added, “dealing with Democrats is one thing, dealing with the knuckleheads is another”.
What a difference two months make.
After the smoke cleared from Tuesday’s night battle, after the Republicans emerged victorious and in control of both houses, now that he knows his side is in charge, a different Boehner emerges. ?Gone is the careful, calculating, critical-of-his-own-party voice and is replaced by a challenging, scowling, taunting bully who warns the President of the United States (as if the President were some petulant child) that if he acts unilaterally on his own about immigration, a hot topic for anti immigration Republicans:
?“When you play with matches, then you take the risk of burning yourself, and he’s going to burn himself if he continues to go down this path.”
Newly emboldened bully Boehner also went on to tell the American people that regardless of what they want, regardless of the success of it, regardless of the over 60 million tax dollars spent on it so far, the House will continue on in its attempts to repeal Obamacare.
If there’s one benefit from this transformation, this ‘worm’s turn’, is at least we don’t have to hear anymore political pundits pretend that this 2014 Mid Term Republican victory is a chance for the Republicans to focus on doing the work of the American people and not turning the last two years of this Obama presidency into an even worse version of the last six years of the Obama hunting that the Republicans have been relentlessly pursuing.
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