J. Robert Smith
American Thinker
12/21/2012
Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” (B as in “Big Bomb”) is as dead as a Cowsills’ 45 record. Vinyl doesn’t wear well in the digital age, and Speaker Boehner’s plan to raise taxes didn’t woo GOP House caucus members or tea parties and grassroots conservatives across the republic. Boehner and his team were effectively trying to legislate against their party’s conservative base and the outcome was thankfully predictable…
…Like other establishment Republicans, Boehner and Cantor read too much into the president’s narrow popular vote win. Moreover, both men are clearly overmatched in their duel with the president, who sticks to his principles like superglue.
Boehner, particularly, has seemed cowed and groping versus confident in making conservative principles the cornerstones of his negotiations with the president. Boehner has played the role all too often played by Washington-ized Republicans: the enabler and fixer of Democrats’ excesses. The speaker has shown that he’d rather find ways to straighten out Washington’s big government mess than use the mess to push for badly needed far-reaching reforms and downsizing of the federal leviathan. Boehner’s had an opportunity to make history, and all he wants to do is sweep floors.
Uncle Sam’s problem has been and continues to be wild spending, outrageous debt, and unfunded liabilities that promise to crush working Americans and the economy as the near-years unfold. The problem hasn’t been and isn’t too little tax revenue into Uncle Sam’s coffers. That Boehner and his establishment GOP colleagues agreed to put taxes on the table ahead of any negotiations and resolution of spending cuts and entitlement reforms was a strategic error of the first magnitude. In so doing, the speaker ceded critical ground – in terms of good governance and politics – to the president…
…In ordinary times, Speaker Boehner may have proven a competent leader. But faced with extraordinary circumstances, the speaker is a pipsqueak. The stakes are enormous for the nation, in terms of the economy and liberty. The speaker and his cohorts either fail to grasp the monumental nature of the times or they’re simply ignoring it. The day, the challenges, and the problems demand more than what Boehner and his team are capable of giving…
Read the complete article at American Thinker.
Update: Confirmed: John Boehner Is In Over His Head. Way Over His Head
The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating look inside the fiscal cliff negotiations.
I think it’s supposed to be a pro-Boehner piece that shows he was willing to go the extra mile at every turn only to run into an immovable object…Barack Obama. That much is true but the image of Boehner either not realizing or not caring that he was trying to “negotiate” with someone who was only interested in accepting his surrender is depressing…
