Boehner team calls tea party members “insane asylum,” “extremists”
Roll Call reports,
Rep. Steven C. LaTourette, R-Ohio, said Boehner told him that he would call Obama to see about the way forward. But it is clear that his negotiating leverage is tarnished and Republicans may inevitably have to swallow a fiscal cliff deal that heavily skews toward the president’s demands.
“It weakens the entire Republican Party, the Republican majority. It’s the continuing dumbing-down of the Republican Party and we are going to be seen more and more as a bunch of extremists that can’t even get a majority of our own people to support policies that we’re putting forward,” LaTourette said.
But he predicted that, ultimately, the ordeal will not cost Boehner his job, blaming instead the intractable wing of the conference who refused to vote for the plan B.
“It’s like saying that the superintendent of an insane asylum should be discharged because he couldn’t control the crazy people. That’s nuts,” he said.
The Hill adds:
Moments before announcing defeat to his GOP colleagues, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) recited the Serenity Prayer often heard at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
“Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference,” the downtrodden House Speaker said at a hastily called closed-door meeting Thursday night to tell fellow House Republicans that he didn’t have to votes to pass his “Plan B” effort to avoid the “fiscal cliff.”
In hindsight, such a prayer at such a moment sounds a bit self-serving.
Perhaps one of the things Congress should have the courage and wisdom to change is the GOP leadership.