Boehner's Power Outage Dimming Obama's Options As Well
The most important measure of power on Capitol Hill can be summed up with a question: "Do you have the votes?"
For House Speaker John Boehner, the answer once again appears to be "no." In a move that's hard to view as anything short of humiliating for the speaker, Boehner had to shelve his own "Plan B" fiscal-cliff-avoidance proposal Thursday evening after it became clear he couldn't get enough fellow Republicans to support it.
The embarrassing failure is being widely interpreted as a critical blow to Boehner's leadership. When a speaker can't get the votes, after assuring everyone he can, it's hard to spin that as anything but a Washington power outage of sorts.
And, perhaps, an existential threat to his speakership.
Failing to get the votes on his Plan B, maybe he also won't be able to garner enough support when House members meet on Jan 3. at the start of the new Congress to pick their leaders? There is certainly a movement among some conservatives to remove him.
Boehner's inability to get his own Republican conference to line up behind him not only increases doubts about him remaining speaker in the new Congress; it also raises a more immediate question for President Obama: Who in the House can he negotiate with in the effort to avoid the large automatic tax increases and spending cuts that will occur in less than two weeks without an agreement?
On the question about his seemingly threatened leadership, Boehner put on a brave face at a Friday news conference. Asked by a reporter if he was concerned about being ousted as speaker, Boehner said:
"No, I'm not. ... While we may not have been able to get the votes last night to avert 99.81 percent of the tax increases, they weren't taking that out on me. They were dealing with the perception that someone might accuse them of raising taxes."