John Boehner Quotes
The more we do to avoid risk and protect our members from tough votes, the more ineffective and polarized the institution becomes
John Boehner, U. S. Congressman (Republican, OH), Speaker of the House, Speech, American Enterprise Institute, Washington DC, September, 30, 2010
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The objective of a large proportion of the Congress then was not to improve the nation or even pass legislation, but to preserve their ideology and attack and weaken the other party. Compromise for example is probably the best legislative practice, but that Congress had a substantial number of Tea Party and other ultra conservatives who believed that any compromise at all was an immoral abandonment of principle.
George W. Bush had become very unpopular and many politicians were trying to distance themselves from him, his policies, and the poor implementation of those policies. Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat, had just lost his own primary election and was attacked because he advocated support of the American president in war and foreign policy.
This was a very courageous statement by the President because it was his own Republican Party that tended to be the most hostile an partisan. However, where some in Congress listened to his advice, the pressure from the extreme right wing pressured the entire Republican party to new extremes of partisanship and vituperation and under the succeeding President Obama, many Republicans would not support positions that they had formerly voted for and/or advocated because they were favored by the Democratic President or other Democratic leader.
The Senate was in the midst of a particular bitter debate. The chaplain offered the following prayer.
In the early years of the Obama Administration, the minority leader of the Senate declared that the object of the Republicans in the Senate was to prevent Obama from being reelected. Therefore, the Republicans used the filibuster to block virtually all legislation. In 2010, the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives and would not pass any legislation that the President favored lest he get credit for accomplishing something. It had gotten so bad, that even when the President proposed Republican ideas about which everyone agreed, that too was blocked.
At the time Congress was gridlocked in bitter hyperpartisan conflict. Most people called for more comity and bipartisanship and most politicians wanted more bipartisanship but blamed the other party for the rift. Mourdock, arguing for less bipartisanship and no compromise defeated Richard Lugar in the Republican Senatorial Primary election. Lugar, one of the most respected and effective Senators was a statesman who worked with any and all to find effective compromises to reach national solutions. The nation was so politically polarized that the Republican Indiana voters ousted one of their most senior senators because he was effective at developing national solutions. See {626717} and {302706} for other Mourdock’s outrageous comments. While this rhetoric won in the Primary, it lost him the general election in a state where Republicans had a strong majority and should have had the seat.
This quotation is very important in that Wood was one of the great political historians of early America and his judgment about the hyperpartisanship of 2012 had reached such extremes that our greatest founding fathers could not have survived in that arena.
John Andrew Boehner is an American politician who served as the 53rd speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U.S. Representative for Ohio's 8th congressional district from 1991 to 2015. The district included several rural and suburban areas near Cincinnati and Dayton.
