Boehner's 'Moment of Truth'

[ProSense]

Boehner's 'Moment of Truth'

by Jed Lewison

Greg Sargent:

From the very beginning of this whole crisis, two facts have been plainly obvious to anyone who cared to appreciate the basic dynamics of the situation:

1) The incentives always argued overwhelmingly in favor of Dems refusing to concede any meaningful ground to the GOP demand for major unilateral concessions in a context where Republicans were using the threat of extensive harm to the country to get their way. This was the only way to prevent this from happening to Dems — and the country — again.

2) There was never any compromise that could prove acceptable to both Tea Party conservatives on one side, and Obama and Senate Dems on the other. One side believes it must reserve the threat of widespread damage to the country as leverage to cripple the Obama presidency before it destroys the country. The other wants to end use of that as leverage for good. That core difference was inherently unbridgeable.

Today, with Senators close to a deal to reopen the government and lift the debt limit, John Boehner may finally have to come to terms with those two facts, and accept their implications: The only way out of this mess is through an alliance of non-Tea Party Republicans and Democrats.

As Greg says, it's been clear all along that tea partiers weren't ever going to accept anything that couldn't get the approval of Ted Cruz, which means the only way to have avoided the crisis atmosphere that we've endured for the past few weeks would have been for Boehner to decide at the start of this that he was going to rely on a coalition of non-tea party Republicans and Democrats to deliver the votes to fund government and avoid default.

Obviously, he didn't choose to go that direction. In a sense, his moment of truth was when he made the decision to follow Ted Cruz off the cliff. And now we're at the point where Boehner is confronting the reality that he should have seen all along: The tea party wing of the GOP was never going to allow government to reopen and it was never going to allow the country to avoid default. And it was never going to achieve its stated goals.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/16/1247808/-Boehner-s-Moment-of-Truth

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023861031

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. ....isn't it also "truth's moment of Boehner"?