Referencing 1998 when GOP lost five seats after trying to kill the Clinton presidency with never-ending investigations, a reporter asked House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Thursday during a press conference, “Is there a line where all of these different investigations crosses too far and starts to generate potential backlash?”
What does Speaker Boehner reply? Waving his pamphlet on jobs, the spectre of former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s resignation hanging over him, a desperate Boehner pivoted, “That’s why I continue to talk about jobs. Jobs are our number one focus.”
Watch here:
The fact that Boehner said this on the day when the House is wasting taxpayer money on yet another fake ObamaCare repeal vote didn’t stop the Speaker from trying to sell his stumble as a huge success. But really, what choice does he have? His party is looking almost criminal with the leaked edited emails and the televised “hearings” from which actual experts are blackballed. So Boehner talked about what he wants the public to hear him talk about — jobs! But he can’t get his House to actually legislate on a real jobs bill — you know, one that will actually create jobs.
The Speaker continued, “But, uh, we have two jobs here. Our job is to legislate, and we’re trying to legislate things (this House is the least productive one in a decade, with just 146 roll-call votes since Jan. 3, so much so that we’ve taken to clapping when Boehner actually allows a vote) that will help create jobs in our country (except for an actual jobs bill, of course – those they refused to pass), but we also have a responsibility under the Constitution to provide oversight of the Executive Branch of government.”
Perhaps this harkens to a new respect on the part of House Republicans to do their constitutional duties. If so, we can expect them to stop obstructing the reconciliation process on the budget ASAP. Tick tock.
Also, unless “oversight” means “witch hunt” in Republicanese, they might want to allow the public to hear what the experts have to say about Benghazi, instead of trying to hide them from the public by keeping them behind closed doors and not allowing their testimony to be televised. The scandals are looking like a Republican propaganda effort gone too far, also known as overreach.
The good news is that Boehner promised more talk, because that’s what we pay the House to do. The Speaker repeatedly mentioned how very soon his House would “talk” about a replacement for ObamaCare. While Speaker Boehner tried to deflect questions about why his House was wasting taxpayer money on yet another ObamaCare repeal vote, he pivoted into attack mode, calling the Obama administration “arrogant” (that’s “uppity” for those of you who haven’t spent time in the South, as in, one who does not know his place, aka, “boy”). He sold his fantasy narrative that a vote to repeal ObamaCare that will go nowhere is going to create jobs, and then this:
“Our system requires the bonds of trust between the American people and their government. And those bonds, once broken, are very hard to repair. Nothing dissolves the bonds between the people and their government like the arrogance of power here in Washington. And that’s what the American people are seeing today from the administration. Remarkable arrogance.
“This House will stop at nothing to get to the American people, the answers and the accountability that they expect. But the best way to repair this damage is for the administration to come forward with the truth. The whole truth so that the American people will have all of the facts.”
Speaking of accountability, Speaker Boehner rarely has his full pressers on his website, and today was no different. The video on his website does not include the part where the press does that awful thing of asking questions. Whereas the White House publishes the entire transcript, Boehner’s office only publishes the excerpt they want you to know about, and the video is edited so that the press questions are cut out.
Backlash is the natural result of overreach. It’s just a matter of time.
Continued failure doesn’t stop Republicans from banging their heads into the same wall of defeat, which is just another sign of their failure to adapt. Crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
It didn’t work against Clinton and it hurt their party, so their obvious choice for battle this time around is to do that again. Winning.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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