By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Now I know why John Boehner cries all the time. I’d cry too if I knew I would go down in history as the man who lost control of the House of Representatives, capitulating to an extremist legislative fringe who answers only to their gerrymandered districts and has little concern that the economic underpinnings of America — its neglected infrastructure, failing systems and underfunded social safety net — are circling the drain.
Boehner began his tenure as Leader of the House, famous for his loyalty to the Republican party and a tan that only a Sunkist orange could envy. He’ll end it with a legacy of partisan obstruction at the hands of radicals who succeeded in imploding their own party, remembered for his defiance in the face of reason, his tearful gaze and trembling mouth.
Not all of us underestimated the Tea Party. They may have been born in the hot pot of Glenn Beck’s, Michele Bachmann’s and Sarah Palin’s paranoia, but they were always dangerously tone deaf ideologues, nannyed by FOX News and financed by the Kochs. Capitalizing on the fears that too large a slice of their taxed income is being frittered away by a liberal government, the Tea Baggers (who wisely let that handle die an infamous death, thanks to Jon Stewart) mobilized as a ‘new’ political movement but were loosely composed of frustrated small-government Libertarians aligned with the conspiracy theories nurtured by the Republican right-wing, and the Koch-funded, decades-old ideology known as the John Birch Society.
Swept into power in 2010 as heroes in their home town, the Baggers see their role as giant killers, disruptors sent to Washington to stop government cold, and thanks to the gerrymander SNAFU that has crippled election politics, they are succeeding beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. The American public, overall, is not with them as they stonewall legislation that would assist the economy and stabilize the nation, but as is increasingly evident, they don’t care.