How Pelosi can save Boehner’s job and the republic
Only
John Boehner can back down from the showdown on a government default,
but he may need the help of Democrats to do it. Rex Nutting has a wild
idea about how the shutdown could end with a grand left-right ...
How Pelosi can save Boehner’s job and the republic
Commentary: To prevent default, Democrats could back the speaker
new
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Barack Obama cannot back down. Ted Cruz will not.
There’s only one person in America who can back down and, in doing so, prevent a crippling federal default, and that’s Speaker John Boehner.
The most pressing question facing the nation right now is: How can we
coax Boehner and the Republicans in from the ledge, without at the same
time rewarding them for taking the nation to the brink of economic
disaster?
To answer that question, you must know what Boehner wants, and what he
fears. I don’t pretend to have any special knowledge of Boehner’s heart
and mind, but I do have a few guesses:
House Speaker John Boehner is the only person who can pull the nation
back from default. He may need the Democrats’ help to do it.
Boehner doesn’t want to destroy or even sully the credit of the United
States, no matter the short-term gain for some politicians. Boehner
wants to remain as speaker of the House. Boehner wants a smaller and
more responsive government. Boehner wants to help fellow Republicans get
elected. Boehner wants a way out that allows him to hold his head high
and be ready to fight again another day.
Boehner’s dilemma is that he may not be able to come down off the ledge without angering the tea party,
which makes up for its small numbers with an ideological purity that
appeals to the conservative base of the party. This showdown with Obama
over the debt ceiling has been the tea party’s idea all year.
Boehner is trapped in a world he never made. His caucus of 232
Republicans is dominated by the 50 or 60 members who identify themselves
as tea partiers and who have dragged the whole party not just to the
right, but to a position of ideological rigidity that now threatens the
nation with an previously unthinkable unforced error: default.
The other 180 or so House Republicans live in constant fear that what
was done to Sen. Robert Bennett, Sen. Richard Lugar, Rep. Michael
Castle, Rep. Bob Inglis and others will be done to them. Those veteran
mainstream Republican lawmakers were driven out of office by tea party
challengers for being willing to compromise; in other words, they were
considered RINOs — Republicans in name only.
Assuming that Boehner doesn’t want to just take a leap off the ledge and
default on the government’s obligations, there’s scope for a
last-minute, grand bargain that could save Boehner and the country.
How a U.S. default would hurt China
China holds nearly $1.3 trillion in U.S. Treasury debt. Learn more about the risks of a default and the potential repercussions for China and the world.
It would take the cooperation of Democrats, mainstream Republicans and
the business community, which has traditionally been the main financial
support for the Republicans. As anyone who’s been paying attention for
the past five years knows, cooperation is nearly extinct in Washington.
So, although this idea is crazy, it may be that crazy is the only way out of this mess. Here’s one way the showdown could end:
Since Boehner is worried that the tea party could depose him at any point, Nancy Pelosi
— and as many of the 200 Democrats in the House as she can get — should
agree to vote for Boehner if the tea party attempts to remove him as
speaker if he backs down on the default.
In exchange, Boehner would allow the House to vote immediately on
legislation to fund the government and to extend the debt ceiling for a
year or more, and he’d promise thereafter to bring any bill to the floor
that appears to have majority support, not just those that have the
support of a majority of Republicans. He’d offer a clean continuing
resolution, a clean debt ceiling and abandon the Hastert Rule, but he’d
survive.
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