Why John Boehner Is Resigning
By Manu Raju and Deirdre Walsh. House Speaker John Boehner on Friday seized control of an ending that was beginning to feel inevitable.
Boehner had wanted to end his run last year, but was concerned about destabilizing the House Republican caucus. He was ready to announce his resignation on his birthday this November. But Friday, one day after the emotional, historic visit by Pope Francis to Capitol Hill, Boehner found his moment.
“I decided today is the day I’m going to do this, simple as that,” Boehner said at a Capitol Hill press conference, saying his decision came after a night of sleep and prayers.
The decision marked a tumultuous end to Boehner’s nearly six-year tenure leading the fractured Republican caucus, a time marked by repeated fiscal clashes with the White House, failed deal-makings with President Barack Obama and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, but also a rare bipartisan accord on trade and the historic papal visit.
Boehner was elevated to the speakership thanks to the power of tea party candidates in 2010 and then limited by what he could accomplish because of them. The conservative bloc of lawmakers consistently pressed Boehner to take a harder line with Obama and Democrats, a strategy Boehner, a consummate dealmaker, did not always embrace. (Read more from “Why John Boehner Is Resigning” HERE)
_______________________________________
John Boehner Will Resign From Congress
By Jennifer Steinhauer. Speaker John A. Boehner, an Ohio barkeeper’s son who rode a conservative wave to one of the highest positions in government, said Friday he would relinquish his gavel and resign from Congress, undone by the very Republicans who swept him into power.
Mr. Boehner, 65, made the announcement in an emotional meeting with his fellow Republicans on Friday morning as lawmakers struggled to avert a government shutdown next week, a possibility made less likely by his decision.
Mr. Boehner told almost no one of his decision before making it Friday morning. “So before I went to sleep last night, I told my wife, I said, ‘You know, I might just make an announcement tomorrow,’ ” Mr. Boehner said at a news conference in the Capitol. “This morning I woke up, said my prayers, as I always do, and thought, ‘This is the day I am going to do this.’ ”
His downfall again highlighted the sinewy power of a Republican Party faction whose anthem is often to oppose government action. It also made vivid the increasingly precarious nature of a job in which the will and proclivities of a politically divisive body must be managed. No House speaker since Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., who held the gavel from 1977 to 1986, has left the job willingly.
For Mr. Boehner, who has been pressured throughout his tenure to push for deeper spending cuts and more aggressive policy changes than were possible with President Obama in the White House, seemed both exhausted by the fight and yet at peace with his final move: to leave rather than face a potentially humiliating fight within his party. (Read more from this story HERE)
Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.