Dear Speaker Boehner,
JFK wrote Profiles in Courage about eight courageous Senators:* John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Lamar, George Norris, and Robert A. Taft.
You can join them as a shining example of courage.
Or you can get some kicks by standing in front of a group of crazy and/or craven legislators, saying you'll fight to yours (and maybe the country's) death to kill a duly passed law.
If you decide to show some courage and choose the former, though, here's your strategy:
1. Present both a clean CR and Debt Ceiling bills simultaneously, if that's procedurally possible.
2. If you cannot do that and must submit the CR first then:
(a) If necessary, hold back a clean CR. If you put the clean CR on the floor, you will be removed as Speaker in favor of Speaker Cantor or Speaker Steve King or Speaker Gohmert. Don't risk being thrown out as Speaker before there's a vote on the CR.
Then:
(b) Send a clean debt ceiling bill to the floor. That will avert the worst threat to the country. Yes, you will then be removed as Speaker. But you will be known in history as someone who stood for principle when radicals threatened the country.
So it's your choice, Speaker Boehner. Stand triumphantly in front of Michele Bachmann et al. and have a fleeting moment as a hero to lunatics. Or send the clean bill or bills to the floor and let the lunatics vote you out.
(btw -- your business buddies will not hold this against you, because they too fear the shutdown and default. This is one courageous stand that won't prevent you from cashing in as a lobbyist after you exit.)
Yours in sanity and courage,
Upper West
*John Quincy Adams, a Senator (1803–1808) (later President and Representative) from Massachusetts, for breaking away from the Federalist Party.
Daniel Webster, also from Massachusetts, for speaking in favor of the Compromise of 1850.
Thomas Hart Benton, from Missouri, for staying in the Democratic Party despite his opposition to the extension of slavery in the territories.
Sam Houston, from Texas, for speaking against the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. Sam Houston was also profiled for opposing Texas' secession from the Union, for which he was deposed from the office of Governor.
Edmund G. Ross, from Kansas, for voting for acquittal in the Andrew Johnson impeachment trial. As a result of Ross's vote, along with those of six other Republicans, Democrat Johnson's presidency was saved, and the stature of the office was preserved.
Lucius Lamar, from Mississippi, for eulogizing Charles Sumner on the Senate Floor and other efforts to mend ties between the North and South during Reconstruction, and for his principled opposition to the Bland–Allison Act to permit free coinage of silver.
George Norris, from Nebraska, for opposing Joseph Gurney Cannon's autocratic power as Speaker of the House, for speaking out against arming U.S. merchant ships during the United States' neutral period in World War I, and for supporting the Presidential Campaign of Democrat Al Smith.
Robert A. Taft, from Ohio, for criticizing the Nuremberg Trials for trying Nazi war criminals under ex post facto laws. Counter-criticism against Taft's statements was vital to his failure to secure the Republican nomination for President in 1948.