David Corn recounts John Boehner’s history in light of the latter’s recent efforts in a book excerpt to decry the Republican party’s descent into lunacy while acting like he bears little responsibility for the party going bonkers. It is the old, old political story of party leaders encouraging extremists to gain greater power and thinking that they could control those elements only to find that when they try to regain control, those extremist elements turn on them.
What he did not say in this excerpt is that he shares the blame for the rise of extremism in the Republican Party that led to Trump’s 2016 victory—and, subsequently, the bloody and seditious attack of January 6.
Boehner became speaker in 2011 because of the tea party. This right-wing movement, fueled by the big money of the Koch Brothers and other conservative donors, swept the Republicans into control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections of 2010. The tea party was an amalgamation of various constituencies, including the religious right, anti-government GOPers, and what Boehner would call “whack jobs.” A poll at the time found that 30 percent of tea partiers believed the racist birther conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. In fact, fierce hatred of Obama was a chief animating force for the movement. In a way, the tea party was a continuation of the right’s extreme reaction to Obama that had been on display at 2008 rallies for John McCain and Sarah Palin, where Republican voters decried Obama as a commie who was, as Palin charged, “palling around with terrorists.”
…He helped enable tea party extremism. In November 2009, he hosted an anti-Obamacare tea party rally on Capitol Hill, during which the crowd shouted, “Nazis, Nazis” when referring to Democrats. Speaking at that demonstration, Boehner fueled the fear and hatred, declaring the health care bill the “greatest threat to freedom I have seen.” At another tea party protest at the Capitol opposing Obama’s health care legislation, protesters shouted the n-word at Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), the civil rights icon. And some yelled a homophobic slur at Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)
…But Boehner never tried to to tamp down conservative anger and paranoia. He did not tell the birthers to knock it off. He egged on the Obama hatred, allowing the Benghazi-istas to run free and wild. He whipped up extremism on the right to achieve power and then discovered he couldn’t ride that tiger. In 2015, he left the House for calmer days as a merlot-sipping (gulping?) lobbyist.
But the beast Boehner fed did not crawl away. It became the base for Trump and Trumpism. The political cultural fire that Boehner allowed to burn was just right for Trump and his supertanker of gasoline. He had presided over the GOP’s complete embrace of conspiracy-theory politics and hate-driven extremism.
So shed no tears for Boehner. The Republican party establishment is now split into two factions: those like Boehner who encouraged those forces that resulted in the madness of Trumpism and now seek absolution, and those like Mitch McConnell who think they can still get some mileage out of it.
It’s been the same blend of greed and hate for a long time. They are just a little less circumspect about it now. This is considered a problem by some.
Take the policies from the Contract with America from the mid-90s, for example, and try to find something that isn’t too ghoulish. Good luck with that. If any of it seems kind of marginally okay or reasonable to you at first glance, then read the fine print and think again. Anyway, this is the 1990s we’re talking about, not during the Trump administration or just a few years prior to it.
The wiki page linked above explicitly gives credit to Gingrich and Armey (as well as Reagan), which is right, but Boehner was also in the House leadership at the time as the Republican Conference Chairman (only a few years after he got into Congress). The point is, he was clearly a total shithead from the beginning, along with the rest of the leadership in his party. (And of course this also applies to a significant number of conservative Dems.)
Boehner’s concern now is that, if they’re too open about this, some can more easily recognize that what they’re peddling to voters is purely and simply an ideology of shitheadedness. It’s definitely not that there’s too much shitheadedness because he wants something “less extreme.”
They can still get all kinds of money, so that’s not really such a big issue. (But do political ads ever really do anything, other than provide income to consultants, strategists, the media, etc.?) However, even with all the voter suppression and so forth, they still need to convince at least some people to support them in voting booths. So, they often still need to lie about what they are and what they’re doing. And if he could think of even more things for them to lie about, I’m sure Boehner would gladly support that too.
@1 consciousness I don’t think that is exactly correct. It looks a lot the same at first glance but it used to be that the stupidity and hate was just a performance to generate popular support or a side show that the party core let happen. The party core was in it for money and power. This resulted in a generation of Republicans who grew up fed on this stuff and now actually believe it.
Putting it another way, the greed and power hunting has gone down and the hate and stupidity has gone up. The desire to manipulate the system for power has been replaced with blowing it up. The willingness to backstab anybody for personal advancement has been replaced with owning the liberals as a goal. The reactionary conservatism of the older generation has been replaced with a handful of slogans.
This is why so many Republicans got so invested in Trump. They don’t really believe anything, they just want to take down the Democrats. They could embrace somebody who rejected so many of their stated ideals because he so aggressively attacked opponents.
I fail to see the distinction. That’s exactly what the greed and hate are for, and none of that has ever changed.
Does it make any practical difference who “actually believes” what? I’m not asking whether it should, but whether it does.
According to you, they were already content to “let it happen” as “a side show” in order to have popular support, which means large chunks of the population actually believed that shit back then. That was just as useful to the party elites then as it is now, no matter what they may have believed then or may believe now. In any case, neither of us can read minds, and I don’t see how it could make a difference either way.
Still not getting it. What do you think of these?
— “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
— “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
Those bullshit slogans are both famous ones from St. Reagan, and of course both predate the era that I was talking about (when Boehner appears on the scene). And if that’s not “blowing it up,” I don’t know what is.
They never believed anything other than obtaining power for themselves. Maybe you weren’t thinking of it that way, but this is effectively what you had said just before. If you’re going to stick with that, then it seems like we should be agreeing.
But which ideals do you think Trump rejected? I don’t mean lies and rhetoric that they all knew were lies and rhetoric. I mean real actions taken in office.
In those terms, he is like any generic Republican from the last 30-40 years. His main accomplishments?
(1) Tax cuts for the rich.
(2) Even more pro-corporate/anti-people Supreme Court justices.
That’s what they always wanted.
OT: Regarding the latest “Possible New Physics!!!!” foofaraw around the muon g-2 results from Fermilab:
Ethan Siegel has a great article on this, with an excellent summary of the underlying theory, here;
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/04/08/why-you-should-doubt-new-physics-from-the-latest-muon-g-2-results/?sh=60d2bc736c4b
@3 The practical difference between the old (80’s sense old) Republican party and the current incarnations is that the old party had some sense and could be negotiated with. When a bill suited their own goals they would support it, when it polled well enough in their regions of the country they would support Democratic proposals, a few earmarks could bribe the wavering ones in. Now it’s a tough job to convince the Republicans not to crash the country out of spite. They oppose everything simply because they don’t want to let anything proposed by the Democrats pass, even if it’s obviously a good idea. Getting a budget passed every year has turned into a huge hassle.
The old Republican party was concerned with maintaining the US’s global political power and recognized that meant sometimes keeping treaties you didn’t personally agree with. The new party is happy to publicly walk out on deals and cancel treaties on a large scale.
As for Trump, I was primarily talking about his scandals. With the old party somebody with the sort of political scandals that Trump has would be out the door. Somebody who had switched parties and flipped political positions just to run with his new party would never be trusted or embraced by the party.
Yes. And the riot in Washington that almost over ran the capital shows just how much it does. The old Republican party would have actually worked to block such riots and would be seriously investigating how it happened. For those motivated mostly be self interest & desire for power serious threats to their lives and the power structure are a big issue no matter the politics behind it. The new Republicans are ignoring or downplaying the issue. They don’t particularly care about the consequences as long as it seems dangerous to Democrats.