Skip to footer

Will Boehner's absence change anything in Congress?

For the next month, Speaker John Boehner is untethered from the hard right, setting the stage to pass stalled measures. But removing Boehner also makes longterm prospects worse.

|
Steve Helber/AP
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio pauses during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 25, 2015. In a stunning move, Boehner informed fellow Republicans that he would resign from Congress at the end of October.
  • By Joshua Huder Voices contributor

Speaker John Boehner finally succumbed to the three-year pressure campaign waged by House conservatives. As politically weak as Boehner was in his conference, he was never going to be forced out of his position. He’s powerful enough that he could leave on his own terms. On Friday, he did just that. The question now is: Where does that leave a divided and unwieldy House majority?

Over the next month, this potentially untethers Speaker Boehner from the hard right. A short-term continuing resolution (CR) will pass next week and potentially set the stage to pass the Highway Trust Fund bill and other priorities currently stuck in limbo. In short, Boehner is free to do what he has done for the last five years: enable Republicans to get out of their own way on what should be easily passed bills. Boehner has deftly moved his conference around problems that truly threatened the Republican brand and fundraising from the issues like the doc-fix, the Violence Against Women Act, trade promotion authority, to the debt ceiling and his handling of the shutdown in 2013. In his last month, that will likely remain his focus. This time, however, he likely won’t feel tied to demands from the right that could endanger these deals or the party.

Once he leaves, Republican politics become trickier. Conservatives waged this rebellion, finally succeeding after nearly three years. They will want a successor with proven conservatism or at least win assurances their demands will gain more traction in the legislative process. In this scenario, more distant obstacles may become even more difficult. Critical legislation such as the December continuing resolution and the debt ceiling may become the battlefield in which newly emboldened conservatives will challenge the rest of the party to follow their lead. The problem is the structural features of government that have prevented conservative wins in several showdowns remain in place. The president will still veto any legislation that defunds Planned Parenthood, undermines Obamacare, undermines nondefense programs in unacceptable ways. Senate Democrata will still filibuster spending bills. 

In other words, this potentially makes an already bad situation worse in the time remaining in the 114th Congress. It’s unclear who will succeed Boehner, how they’ll manage the factions within the conference, and if they can chart a path toward victory in 2016. However, removing Boehner won’t change the broader dynamics causing dysfunction. It arguably makes them worse.

Conservatives won the battle they’ve been fighting for years. However, it’s unclear they’ve furthered their cause in the war.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Will Boehner's absence change anything in Congress?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Politics-Voices/2015/0929/Will-Boehner-s-absence-change-anything-in-Congress
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe