Cantor vs Boehner? Or Is It The Ruling Elites vs The Rest of Us That Really Matters?

[Donnachaidh]

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2011/04/cantor-vs-boehner-or-is-it-ruling.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter


While working people were finally drawing together into a we are one stance-- which they are allowing Democrats who want to, to tag along on-- the Tea Party has been disintegrating as a grassroots force and the behind-the-curtain-elements are at war with the Republican Establishment over the extent of the nihilism the party-- as vessel-- can adopt. Yesterday, for example, Beltway pundit Charlie Cook, explained how Republicans are putting their House majority in jeopardy by going after entitlements and, in fcat, jeopardizing their hold on older white voters (who are big Medicare fans). And while Martin Luther King III was explaining why his father would have been in the front lines of the pro-democracy battles of the battles raging in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Michigan... wherever Republicans are trying to curtain collective bargaining rights, the Republicans in Congress were picking sides for the epic civil war brewing in their ranks.

This week John Heilemann at New York magazine speculates on how long a certain politician with a "perma-tan and a propensity to weep openly at the slightest provocation" will be able to last as Speaker. Last week Boehner wasn't getting any substantial resistance from a spineless Democratic Establishment already in their favorite defensive crouch as he put together a compromise to further benefit the ruling elites at the expense of the working and middle classes. Across the board surrender by conflicted Democratic Party cowards-- or worse-- would be viewed by anyone rational as a major Republican victory and a major Boehner victory. "Rational" is the key word. Boehner's GOP allies were "behaving like a spastic finger jabbing him in the eye."

At the base of the Capitol, the tea-party faithful staged a rally aimed at pressuring House conservatives to brook no compromise. Boehner’s former mentor Newt Gingrich met with GOP freshmen and urged much the same, arguing for spending cuts billions deeper than what the speaker regards as politically feasible. Then there was the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, openly distancing himself from, and positioning himself to the right of, his boss Boehner-- a maneuver that struck some as odd, some as shifty, and others as downright treacherous.

Navigating the impasse over the current year’s budget is widely and correctly seen as the first major test of Boehner’s speakership. The choice before him seems stark: strike a deal and risk splintering the new Republican majority in the House or hold his caucus together and risk the political fallout from a shutdown. Will Boehner prove deft enough to find a way to slice this Gordian knot? Quite possibly. But it may provide him little joy, for the past two months have been but a mild preview of the hellish dynamics he will be contending with-- times ten and with a vengeance-- in the vastly bigger, more dramatic, more consequential budget battle that lies ahead.

More at the link --

[DJ13]

1. Intramural cat fights are just Kabuki Theater to distract from whats really going on