John Boehner has to go

Senator John F. Kennedy wrote a Pulitzer prize winning book of short biographies about eight Senators who had demonstrated great courage under enormous pressure from their parties and their constituents, entitled Profiles in Courage (1957).

If a similar scholarly work were written today about members of the House, the TanMan from Ohio, Weeper of the House John Boehner, most certainly would not qualify for this book.

This chain smoking alcoholic who once passed out checks from Big Tobacco to bribe members for their votes on the floor of the House, Did John Boehner really pass out tobacco bribe checks on the House Floor? (yes he did, and he admitted to it), deserves his own chapter titled “Profiles in Cowardice.”

Speaker Boehner has presided over the less-than-do-nothing 112th Congress, and followed up this failure with the even more spectacular failure of the less-than-less-than-do-nothing 113th Congress. This craven coward lives in fear of his own radical extremist Tea Party Caucus, and he cares more about his job title and perks than the best interests of the country or the American people. He is the weakest and most ineffectual Speaker of the House in modern American history. Boehner is unquestionably and without equal the “Worst. Speaker. Ever.”

How someone of such low moral character and demonstrated lack of leadership skills ever rose to the prominence of Speaker of the House, as elected by his GOP cohorts, is one of the great imponderable questions of our time. It represents a failure of our politics.

In his address to the nation on immigration last night, President Obama had this to say to his critics:

And to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill. I want to work with both parties to pass a more permanent legislative solution. And the day I sign that bill into law, the actions I take will no longer be necessary.

And how did Speaker Boehner respond?

“With this action, the president has chosen to deliberately sabotage any chance of enacting bipartisan reforms that he claims to seek,” Mr. Boehner told reporters. “And as I told him yesterday, he’s damaging the presidency itself.”

That’s bold talk for a craven coward who has so badly damaged our democratic process, the reputation of the Congress, and the power of the speaker position over the past four years. This is a textbook case of psychological projection. The man who has “deliberately sabotaged” comprehensive immigration reform is John Boehner himself.  The purported leader of the House has the power to bring a bill to the floor of the House anytime he chooses, yet Boehner has refused to do so.

Speaker Boehner has repeatedly reneged on several promises he has made to bring an immigration bill to the floor of the House for a vote. The Senate overwhelmingly passed a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill in July 2013, to which Boehner responded that he would not allow it to come to a vote in the House — because it would pass. Then he said he would consider a series of smaller bills pertaining to immigration in the House, none of which ever received a committee vote and floor vote.

The only immigration bill that Boehner has allowed to come to the floor for a vote was the purely symbolic “deport ’em all” bill drafted by Tea Party anti-immigrant Reps. Steve “cantaloupe calves” King (IA) and Michele “Minnesota Loon” Bachmann (MN) in August — a bill which would have deported the DREAMers. This was to appease the radical Tea Party Caucus of his party and the demagogues of the conservative media entertainment complex. With this one vote, the GOP sealed its fate as the modern-day version of the nativist and xenophobic Know Nothing Party of the 19th Century.

John Boehner’s craven cowardice and his abject failure of leadership would shock the generations of House Speakers who preceded him. The man is a complete and utter disgrace to the institution.

America cannot afford another two years of John Boehner as Speaker of the House. He should resign and leave the stage of political life. Go back to tending bar in Ohio, never to be heard from again. Oh, I hurt his feelings. There he goes crying again.