John Boehner Attacks Republican Party, Gets Put in His Place by Former Colleague
John Boehner must miss the days when Republicans were losing.
The former speaker of the House, who was driven out of his post three years ago by congressional conservatives tired of getting run over by then-President Barack Obama, tried to strike back against the party this week by telling an interviewer that the Republican Party is “kind of taking a nap somewhere.”
But one of his former colleagues in the House, a man who served on Boehner’s leadership team, used a weekend interview to explain just how wrong Boehner was.
According to the Detroit News, Boehner’s comments Thursday came in response to a question at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island, Mich., about the future of the Republican Party.
Boehner’s answer was a combination of an insult to the party he used to lead, and a back-handed compliment to President Donald Trump, who led the party to victory in the 2016 presidential race.
“There’s no Republican Party,” Boehner said. “There’s a Trump party. The Republican Party is kind of taking a nap somewhere.”
That might have been true if the definition of “Republican Party” is the kind of establishment organization Boehner led – the party that controlled the House of Representatives for six of Obama’s eight years in office but still let the president run roughshod. (Obama was sorrier than most Republicans that the Ohio Republican stepped down.)
But the party is more than that – which is one very good reason Boehner was forced out in 2015. (It’s also why Boehner’s departure from the House was greeted by such cheers from the right.)
In an interview Sunday with Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union,” current House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California outlined the ways the Republican Party has succeeded in its goals with Donald Trump in the White House.
And the list sounds like anything but a party “taking a nap.”
Check it out here.
“Well, I would think it changed for the better because let’s first look at the facts, Dana,” McCarthy said. “We’re at 3.8 percent unemployment. This ties a 50-year low in America. African-Americans and women are at the lowest in unemployment. Unemployment claims are at a 44-year low. The G.I. Bill is now no longer 15 years or you lose it, it’s now for a lifetime.”
McCarthy cited other Republican achievements, such as cracking down on human trafficking online, pending action on the country’s opioid addiction crisis and rebuilding the country’s military.
All of that is true, and Boehner, in his criticism, even acknowledged Trump’s accomplishments.
“…(I)f you can peel away the noise, and the tweets and all that, which is virtually impossible to do, but if you peel all this away, from a Republican standpoint, the things that he’s doing by and large are really good things,” he said, according to CNN.
There’s no question that Boehner was right about at least one thing. It’s a very good chance that none of these things would have happened with anyone but Trump in the White House.
But he could not have done it if the Republican Party weren’t acting on its principles.
It was Republican votes – and not a single Democrat – that gave the country last year’s historic tax cuts. It was the Republican Senate that confirmed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
In other words, it’s a Republican president, working with a Republican Congress, that’s racking up wins for the American people – in the face of relentless attacks from a biased media and a political opposition that shows every day that it’s anything but “loyal” to the ideals of America.
The Republican Party isn’t the Trump Party, and it’s not taking a nap. It’s a party that Trump has finally awoken from its establishment somnolence and started winning again.
John Boehner must really miss the old days.
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