Why is John Boehner so afraid of the Tea Party freshmen?

Because if he stands up to the Tea Party on this, he won’t be Speaker anymore.

And there is a Tea Party challenger for him in the primary election in 2012. Right now the challenger is a proxy for an anti-abortion activist, but if Boehner isn’t careful it could be a real challenge.

Because he’s a Republican politician, and as such, fear and greed is all he knows.
yeah, I said it

@zenvelo Maybe. The Tea Party is less than half the Republican members. But many of the more rational representatives may also fear Tea Party primary challenges. I really think the Tea Party is over, though. They’ve way overplayed their hand, and will only dominate in the most wrong-wing districts in 2012.

@GladysMensch While I can’t disagree with the fact that the current Republican Party is a corporatist, fascist movement; even the bulk of his own party abandoned Boehner on this. The Tea Party commanded that he walk out on a limb for them, and the rest of the Republican establishment started sawing it off.

No one believes this 2 month extension will do anything for the economy. It is a political fight, not an economic one. Frankly, a 1 year extension will have very little economic impact but there is at least an argument for it. A wrong headed argument but an argument. The two month extension doesn’t even have that. This whole thing is part of the re-election strategy for Obama. the point is to keep us arguing over these pathetic little give-a-ways, instead of the economy. Much to my dismay, it seems to be working. Thanks, in a large part, to the support of the media.

It would be nice to see us trying to get out of this economic mess but it appears we will be haggling over these political issues from now until the election. Gas prices are slowly beginning to ramp back up. I hope that’s a temporary trend but it’s hard to guess. Let the Keystone pipeline go through. It’s one of the few things the government can do to directly create jobs and affect the economy. Instead we’ll probably haggle over more give-a ways, that have little impact on jobs but significant impact on debt. I guess we all do what we’re good at. Obama is good at creating debt, so that’s what he’ll do.

@Jaxk Eliminating the payroll tax cut would have a definite immediate impact on the economy because it would take cash out of people’s hands with the first paycheck of the new year.

The Keystone XL pipeline is considered the #1 current avoidable ecological disaster. That’s why people are opposed to it.

The gas I bought this week (in Northern California, home of the highest gasoline prices in the lower 48) is the lowest it has been in over a year.

Yes, it is a political fight because Boehner and friends cannot do anything the President has endorsed, even if it is for the good of the country. The Republicans will do anything to crater the economy further between now and the election. Recent positive economic news, minor though it may be, has encouraged the Republicans to put a stop to anymore economic growth.

@zenvelo

I get the gas prices every day. They have increased by 8 cents over the past week. More likely you just haven’t seen the change at the pump quite yet. And it is Northern California.

As for Keystone, it has been studied for 3 years. Delaying the decision for another year is a political move. And a move that may very well kill it. There are approximately 55,000 miles of crude oil pipelines already in the US. There are another 95,000 miles of refined product (gasoline, etc.) pipelines in the US. And another 30,000 miles of smaller feeder pipelines. That ship has sailed.

The extension is purely a give-away program to promote the entitlement mentality. There’s no economic argument for it. It’s political not economic.

Boehner is afraid of being seen as a weak leader but what can you do when half of your delegation is made up of neo-libertarian fascists? Boehner needs to accept that the only goal of his party is to make Obama look bad so more of these fascist freaks can be elected next time. They want their sponsors to make the laws and the rest of us peons need to just follow orders and shut up.

@Jaxk Here we are basically agreeing in principle yet again. The 2-month extension of course was never an agenda put forward by either party. It was a political compromise because Senate Democrats wouldn’t let Republicans take $1,500 out of each middle class taxpayer’s pocket in cuts that would last forever, only to give them $1,000 back for 1 year and claim it was a great gift. The 2-month extension stops the tax from going up January 1st, and gives them 2 more mothhs to try to reach a grand compromise on the year extension. Now that House Republicans who claimes they were really for the 1=yesr extension while voting unanimously against it twice are on record claiming they are for a full year extension, it’s going to be even harder for the gamesmanship to go on.

Where I agree is that if payroll deductions had been left alone for the last 2 years and we had devoted the same amount of revenue to infrastructure spending, that would have been far more stimulative in the short term and would have continued to pay benefits for decades to come. But Republicans have blocked infrastructure spending ever since the first stimulus was passed.

Tax cuts are lousy stimulus unless taxes a WAY too high. And tax cuts when taxes are already at an 80-year low are difficult to take back away when times get better.

@Ron_C But Boehner could have just let the bill go to the floor for a up or down vote, as he had obviously promised Mitch McConnell he would do. It would have passed with all the House Democrats voting for it and perhaps 50 or 60 Republicans in swing districts who didn’t want to run in 2012 having just hiked taxes on most of their constituents by casting a no vote. Somehow, the Tea Party house minority made Boehner renege on his promise, and not even allow a vote. What hold do they have over him? He may be a craven politician, but he isn’t a stupid man. He should have been able to run the political calculus, and see this would end in a crushing embarrassment for him.

@Jaxk Chevron in Lafayette California is $3.65, lowest in 18 months. The Valero on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley was $3.43 yesterday at 2 p.m.

This news article shows gas prices dropping this week

What are you paying, and where?

@ETpro I suspect that Boehner is a coward with no real political philosophy. He likes the power and the perks of his office and cares nothing about the electorate. He works for his corporate sponsors and the tea party punks are upsetting his comfortable life.

@Ron_C I guess you must be right. It is what it is.

@zenvelo

I own a gas station. Just telling you what I see for prices from the refineries. Hopefully they will go back down this week and you won’t see the same bump I’ve seen. I don’t have a lot of confidence in that, however.