John Boehner Is Mad at Conservatives for Holding Him to His Campaign Promises

J ohn Boehner is mad. Joining a long list of prominent retired Republicans lamenting their party’s descent into radicalism, Boehner has unloaded on former colleagues in his new book, On The House, and on his publicity tour.

Boehner has complained about the “moron” contingent among congressional Republicans and the “knuckleheads” he was forced to deal with. He reserved the most anger for Senator Ted Cruz, calling him a “reckless asshole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.” (Outtakes from the audiobook version of the memoir have Boehner directing f-bombs at the Texas senator.)

The media have predictably found Boehner’s attacks irresistible. This has led to a ton of publicity that has helped drive the book to the top of the New York Times’ best-sellers list.

To the extent that there has been pushback, much of it has come from those who argue that Boehner didn’t do enough to rein in the extremists within his own party when he was leading the House. But this misses an important point — that the brash and wet-behind-the-ears lawmakers he has been mercilessly berating were merely holding Boehner to promises he routinely made during the campaign season.

Yes, it was in fact unrealistic to expect that Republicans, with control of one chamber of Congress, would be able to force Barack Obama and the Democratic Senate to defund (or seriously scale back) Obamacare — their generational legislative accomplishment. And yes, Boehner is correct that getting anything accomplished in Washington involves compromise.

The problem is, Boehner only wanted to deliver these hard truths once Republicans were in power. He did not head out on the campaign trail in 2010 and say, “If elected, we will try our best to tweak Obamacare here or there, but it will be impossible to repeal it without a Republican Senate and president. Politics is about compromise, after all.” Instead, he vowed full repeal — and signaled there would be no compromise or half measures.

In a portion of his book excerpted at Politico, Boehner recalls:

Since I was presiding over a large group of people who’d never sat in Congress, I felt I owed them a little tutorial on governing. I had to explain how to actually get things done. A lot of that went straight through the ears of most of them, especially the ones who didn’t have brains that got in the way. Incrementalism? Compromise? That wasn’t their thing. A lot of them wanted to blow up Washington. That’s why they thought they were elected.

He goes on to note that, “Some of them, well, you could tell they weren’t paying attention because they were just thinking of how to fundraise off of outrage or how they could get on Hannity that night.”

Yet while being the minority leader of Republicans in 2009 and 2010, Boehner was leading the charge in attacking Obama and vowing to the talk-radio crowd that Republicans would adopt a no-compromise posture if they were to take back the House.

In the weeks leading up to the 2010 Republican wave election, Boehner declared, “This is not a time for compromise, and I can tell you that we will not compromise on our principles.” The venue was Sean Hannity’s talk-radio show.

In October 2010, when Judd Gregg, then the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said that he didn’t think repealing or defunding Obamacare was a good approach, and that Republicans would have to look at something closer to restructuring the law, Boehner was quick to snap back.

“I love Judd Gregg, but maybe he doesn’t get it,” Boehner responded. “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”

Boehner’s statements were also backed up by a document that Republicans unveiled ahead of the election called “A Pledge To America.” While the document did not specifically reference the Tea Party, it certainly paid homage to the movement’s revolutionary fervor. It started off by referencing language from the Declaration of Independence and announced, “An unchecked executive, a compliant legislature, and an overreaching judiciary have combined to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values, striking down long-standing laws and institutions and scorning the deepest beliefs of the American people.”

More specifically, one section promised to “Stop Out-of-Control Spending and Reduce the Size of Government.” It called for reducing spending to levels that existed before the 2009 economic stimulus bill and creating a “hard cap” on future discretionary spending. The document declared, “We offer a plan to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care with common-sense solutions focused on lowering costs and protecting American jobs.”

Given the “Pledge to America” and Boehner’s own rhetoric, it’s difficult to see why Tea Party Republicans should be treated as completely out-of-line for pushing the party to adhere to their campaign promises.

Boehner raised expectations sky-high during the campaign. He became speaker by pledging to shrink government, dramatically cut spending, and repeal Obamacare. It is no shocker that the Republicans who delivered him that majority were convinced they had to use any means at their disposal — be it government shutdowns or debt-ceiling standoffs — to try to achieve the goals that Boehner himself embraced.

Boehner is incensed by Republicans who didn’t understand compromise, yet he told Hannity’s listeners, before the 2010 election, “This is not a time for compromise.” He’s furious about the effort to defund Obamacare but did not offer caveats when he announced, “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”

When Boehner bashes the morons and knuckleheads and lunatics he had to deal with, his spin is that they were too inexperienced to understand that governing requires compromise. In reality, what enrages Boehner is that their stubbornness — be it principled or opportunistic — exposed his own con. The newbies did not abide by the unwritten agreement of Washington veterans such as himself that promises made to voters on the campaign trail were not to be taken seriously once in office.