Not only is John Boehner not good at winning, he’s not good at losing either.
During his concession speech yesterday, he said a few things which may come back to haunt the Republicans next fall.
You know, sometimes, it’s hard to do the right thing. And sometimes it’s politically difficult to do the right thing. But, you know, when everybody called for a one year extension of the payroll tax deduction, when everybody wanted a full year of extended unemployment benefits we were here fighting for the right things. May not have been the politically the smartest thing in the world, but let me tell you what. I think our members waged a good fight. [...]
If you can get this fixed, why not uh, why not do the right thing for the American people – even though it’s not exactly what we want?
Boehner is obviously implying that the right thing to do would have been a 1-year-extension, and he’s right, but here’s the thing — the Democrats, including President Obama himself, called for a 1-year-extension as early as September.
The Republicans refused a 1-year-extension unless all sorts of other awful shit was included in the bill, so what the Democrats settled on instead was a compromise brokered by Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell which included a short-term, 2-month-extension.
Fortunately, John Boehner’s failure was so complete, so absolute, that no one seems to be taking his victimhood routine seriously.
