As the wife and media liaison of a six-term Missouri legislator, I learned a lot about the game of politics and how it is played by those who are best at it. Politicians can play "nice guy" for the voters, and unless the voters know the inside ball game of politics, they will never even know what actually happened.
Politicians can say one thing and can then completely sabotage their own efforts in an attempt to look like a victim to the system.
Many would like to think of Speaker John Boehner as a principled man who is a victim of the process, but anyone close to Boehner knows better. He isn't dumb. He simply would rather look like the victim than the villain.
Voters rushed to the polls to give Speaker Boehner the power to stop Obama's executive amnesty and the rest of his anti-American agenda. Exit polling showed that three-quarters of voters opposed Obama's amnesty. Boehner accepted the power handed to him in the election, then ignored the will of the voters who handed him that power.
To me, anyone who accepts the public trust and then uses that trust for personal gain, ignoring the responsibilities he had when he took the oath of office, is a definitive villain. Even when some of a politician's causes are noble but he is willing to compromise the public trust, he remains a villain.
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Speaker Boehner not only betrayed the trust of the voters who did not want amnesty, but he then made a deal with President Obama and even enjoyed a congratulatory call with him after the deal was final.
Those are the actions of a politician who does not care that he was entrusted by the public to act specifically on the issue of amnesty. This could mean major losses for Republicans in 2016 if the situation isn't rectified and Boehner isn't gone.
Over 400,000 letters are on their way to the offices of Republican leaders and members who are being asked by voters to end Boehner's reign – as part of the "Dump Boehner" campaign spearheaded by WND's Joseph Farah. Conservatives fear that if Boehner isn't gone, they will see a repeat of what happened in 2006 and 2008, only worse.
The psychological reasons for going into politics are complicated but limited. Most politicians go into politics for one of two reasons – they truly want to be a civil servant, or they are so egomaniacal and narcissistic that the idea of all the attention and power is too intoxicating for them to resist.
Speaker Boehner has made it clear that his priority is more power, even if it means more compromise. Conservatives have made it clear that they are not willing to forfeit elections in 2016 to placate a speaker who has not answered their call for real change.
Conservatives have consistently and repeatedly entrusted Republican leadership with a nation in peril. Most Republican voters believe that 2014 was a referendum on Democrats, and that the results of the elections charged Republicans with the responsibility of making significant changes. The first thing Republicans did post-election under Boehner's leadership is cut a deal on amnesty. The second thing Republicans did under Boehner's leadership is cut a deal with Obama himself that spends more and does nothing to curb the debt.
Conservative or not, most Republicans would agree that those actions are not Republican at all.
Republicans have lost confidence in this speaker and will lose confidence in their elected Republicans if they don't make significant changes now. There is one opportunity for Republicans to hold onto the victories they saw at the polls in 2014, and that is to replace Boehner as speaker. After the actions over the last couple of weeks by Republicans, I see nothing else that can save their skin in the elections of 2016.
If John Boehner were my own relative, I would say it is time for him to resign to give Republicans a chance in 2016. The voters who may not be paying attention now will be paying attention in the coming months, and ultimately they will have it no other way. There is no clear path to victory for Republicans in 2016, but there is a very clear path to defeat.
It might sound strange, but the most important thing you can do to win in 2016 might be to get your friends and family on board to press congressional Republicans to oust Boehner now.