Jeffrey Toobin hits the nail on the head in his piece this week skewering the "
pointless cowardice" of John Boehner.
The mainstream reaction to the forced resignation of John Boehner as the Speaker of the House has been a kind of weary admiration. He fought the good fight against the extremists in his Republican caucus, the narrative goes, but his solid Midwestern virtues (he’s from Ohio) were ultimately no contest for the extremism of the Tea Party.
That's certainly the conventional wisdom in Washington—what could he do? He was saddled with a House crazy caucus hell-bent on destroying everything that didn't jibe with their warped world view.
Here's what he could have done: immigration. He could have solved what has arguably been the most vexing legislative issue of the last two decades. He could have helped countless families and children get on sound legal footing in order to fully participate in our economy and the life of this country. Oh, and by the way, he could have helped the Republican Party in spite of itself and the ungrateful nativists who have radicalized it. Here's Toobin on the opportunity Boehner lost by refusing to bring the bipartisan, Senate-passed immigration reform bill to vote in the House:
There was no doubt that the reform bill could pass the House, with the support of most Democrats and a substantial number of Republicans as well. But Boehner’s Tea Party colleagues in the House opposed immigration reform. So the choice for Boehner, who controlled the House floor, was clear: pass a historic bill that would be good for the Republicans and for the republic, or appease the extremist elements in his party in hopes of hanging on to his position as Speaker.
Boehner caved, refusing to bring the bill to the floor for a vote, and he suffered the fate of all those who give in to bullies; he was bullied some more.
The Senate originally
passed that bill in the summer of 2013 and John Boehner let it languish for a year and a half in the House without bringing it to the floor. He purportedly did so because he did not want to break with a recent and misguided GOP tradition of not putting anything to vote that's opposed by a majority of the caucus. It's actually a tradition Boehner broke with to accomplish certain other things, like passing the 2013
Violence Against Women Act and a "clean"
funding bill earlier this year during the shutdown fight over President Obama's immigration executive actions.
John Boehner could have done the same thing with immigration reform right up until the final votes of the 113th Congress in December of last year. Instead, he sat idly by and gained one more year clinging to the gavel while the crazy caucus ran roughshod over him. Hopefully, that final year was personally satisfying for him because he didn't do anything with it that would have been so meaningful and patriotic as fixing our broken immigration system.