Last week's border bill debacle? The five dozen Obamacare repeal bills? Suing the president? Refusing to bring comprehensive immigration reform to the floor? Ignoring the long-term unemployed? It's as if none of that exists for John Boehner, who is
hitting the road to raise money for House candidates and incumbents.
As he began his annual monthlong, 14-state bus tour this week, the Ohio Republican left many of the red-meat issues that rev up his base back in Washington. Instead, he’s trying to promote a different message: Republicans are doing the legislating while everyone else is slacking off.
In the opening days of the tour, Boehner only once talked about President Barack Obama’s health care law, and it was an offhand remark. He said entitlement programs need “tweaks,” not the massive overhaul Republicans have voted for. There was no explicit mention of suing Obama—just a brief nod to trying to “stop the president’s overreach.”
Good luck with that one. All that stuff they've spent the past four years doing—and not doing? It's as if it never happened. Republicans are awfully adept at denial, but this might be too much even for the red meat crowd to swallow.
“When you hear all this stuff about the Congress, understand there are two bodies in the Congress. […] One is working our rear ends off, and frankly, you’d be surprised all the stuff we do is done on a bipartisan basis. [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid didn’t even try to pass a border bill that we passed last Friday.”
They have been working awfully hard—at being the
least productive Congress in history. But a whole lot of post offices have been renamed, so there's that.
“We’ve got solutions,” a casually dressed Boehner said aboard his blue rented coach bus here in central Illinois. “And one of the things I’ve been pushing the members on the last couple of weeks, talk more about solutions.”
Like the big comprehensive Obamacare replacement plan that you've had four years to craft?
[H]e said he believes that he’s doing God’s bidding in the Capitol. To that, a woman in the crowd hollered “praise God.”
“I have not one doubt that I’m doing exactly what God has in mind for me." […]
What can one even say to that?