This really sums up where the Republican Party is these days – with the extremists, far right wingers, etc.; no room for anyone who’s a mainstream conservative, let alone “moderate” or whatever (and remember, there used to be a powerful PROGRESSIVE wing of the Republican Party – long gone now!). By the way, since John Boehner will be stepping down at the end of October, he might as well allow votes on immigration reform and everything else that’s been bottled up for the past few years as he’s prioritized keeping his job over what’s good for the country. Now, there’s no need for him to worry about the former, so he can focus on the latter (which he should have been doing all along, of course).
P.S. What this proves, yet again, is that there’s absolutely zero equivalence of the Tea Party on the “left.” If you believe that, then please list the Democratic incumbents who have been defeated in primaries by a “left-wing” opponent, and please list any members of Democratic Senate or House leadership who have been ousted by the “left,” etc, etc. Also, please explain how all the analyses showing that the Republican Party has lurched far to the right, while the Dems remain a centrist party, are wrong.
UPDATE: Josh Israel of ThinkProgress writes, “With 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) ruling out a bid for the job, a ThinkProgress review of the most likely members to become the next speaker finds that all of them are likely to be as conservative as Boehner or more so.” Choices include Kevin McCarthy (“chief architect of his party’s ‘Pledge to America’ to cut spending and preserve the Bush-era tax cuts”); Steve Scalise (” made headlines earlier this year when it came out that in 2002 he had spoken to a group of white supremacists and in 2004 had been one of a handful of legislators to oppose making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a holiday in Louisiana”); Jim Jordan (“chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus”); Jeb Hensarling (“has denounced Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as ‘cruel Ponzi schemes’ and “has defended recessions as just ‘a part of freedom.'”). Yep, seriously, these are the four most likely people to be the next Speaker of the House. This country – or at least the Republican Party – has gone completely insane.
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