The Republicans have become increasingly extreme over the past six years and with the departure of John Boehner as Speaker of the House they are about to become even more so. The outlook is grim for the effective management of America’s government, under which the presidency is forced to work with Congress to achieve its goals.
But simply because things are about to get worse there is no reason to see Boehner as someone to miss. His aggressive leadership of the Republicans took the US to the brink of chaos when he and his party threatened to shut down the federal government as they denied all funding in a quarrel with the presidency over the federal budget.
So it is startling that having endured this obstructive and deeply partisan speaker for so long, it looks likely that the US will soon have to put up with an even more partisan figure.
The campaigners on the far right of the Republican party are laying the ground for the October 8 elections for a successor by attacking Boehner for “betraying conservatives” after the speaker said (factually) that “Obamacare is the law of the land” and thus could not be repealed by Congress; and for refusing to shut down the Department of Homeland Security in a sure-to-fail effort to reverse President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration. The far-right Freedom Caucus in the Republicans is rejoicing that Boehner is on his way out, and hopes to help vote in a more extreme majority leader who will certainly divide the senate even more deeply.
This will make it hard for the Democrat presidency to get any funding approved before the year-end. Therefore t he US will almost certainly face yet more institutional chaos. It will be interesting to see if the increasingly ineffective Republican candidates for the presidential nomination reject this lunacy, and if former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton can use this Republican folly to make any political headway in her run for the Democratic nomination.
