EDITORIAL: The humiliation of John Boehner

OPINION:

The humiliation of the speaker of the House is just about complete. John Boehner, who can turn on the waterworks at will, finally has something to cry about.

After weeks of loud promises that he would turn back President Obama’s seizure of authority to write legislation to put his amnesty schemes into law, the Republicans in the House backed down meekly last week and funded the Department of Homeland Security just the way Mr. Obama told them to do it.

He might not have had a choice. The Republicans, who have been burned before, want at all cost to avoid a shutdown of the government. They have proved that shutdowns don’t work. But Mr. Boehner, and Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, have learned the painful lesson that they should avoid heroic language and extravagant promises made in the heat of a campaign. Making noise sounds and feels good, but climbing down later is painful, and spends credibility that can’t be easily redeemed. The speaker and the leader should take to heart the vulgar caution of the street: “Don’t let your mouth write checks [another part of the anatomy] can’t cash.”

Now a number of conservatives, mostly sympathetic to the concerns of the tea party, are eager to topple the speaker and replace him with a fighter who knows how to deliver a punch, and not to his own chin. There aren’t enough tea party conservatives to do that, not yet. To get to the magic number they would need help from Democrats, who would ordinarily leap at the chance to punish a Republican.

Since the speaker is elected by the House, and not just by the Republican majority, Mr. Boehner had to turn to Nancy Pelosi, his predecessor, for the support he needs to insure his survival. This does not say much for the largest Republican majority in the House since Herbert Hoover was president.

As much as the Democrats might like to embarrass Mr. Boehner, Mrs. Pelosi and her colleagues had rather deal with the devil they know than deal with someone who might be more determined and more effective in pursuit of a Republican agenda.

“I’d probably vote for Boehner because who is going to replace him,” Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey tells the Hill, the Capitol Hill political daily. “In terms of the institution, I would rather have John Boehner as the speaker than some of these characters who came here thinking that they’re going to change the world.”

Ay, there’s the partisan rub. The Democrats, who held the power and the authority in Congress for generations, naturally like the world they made to their specifications. The tea party conservatives, raucous, unruly and new to power, are impatient to write new specifications.

Mr. Boehner, no doubt expecting smoother going in the new Congress, with Republicans newly in charge at the other end of the Capitol, bumped into harsh reality at once, when 25 conservatives voted against him in the organization of the new Congress. When he caved, necessary or not, on the vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security, 167 Republicans voted against the legislation, which would have been defeated but for the Democrats who to a man (and woman) voted for it. “It’s a sad day for America,” said Rep. Matt Salmon, a Republican of Arizona. “If we aren’t going to fight now, when are we going to fight?”

This leaves Nancy Pelosi in the catbird seat, trying to suppress a smug smile. She holds her tongue. “I don’t have any intention of getting involved in the politics of [the Republicans]. They have enough trouble getting along with each other.”