(Ace of Spades) Jordan says there is no plot, but the Plotters are indeed Plotting to Plot. Two senior House Republican sources tell CNN there's a serious concern among those close to the Speaker that if he allowed a vote on a clean DHS funding bill, conservatives would make a motion to vacate the chair, a direct challenge to his job.
That is basically a no-confidence vote. The way CNN puts it -- and the way AllahPundit interprets it -- is that Boehner could be saved by Democrats, who would be part of the vote, and may prefer his incompetent leadership to a competent conservative's. But I've heard some version of it where the vote takes place in the Republican caucus only; I'll have to check on that.
Boehner clearly has to go. He cannot deliver for the Establishment -- he fails each time he tries to deliver political deliverables to the liberal anti-populists of the Establishment. And he of course does not deliver to the conservative populists -- rather, what we ultimately pressure him into delivering unto us is Failure Theater, a dumbshow in which Republicans pretend to oppose Obama up until their scheduled capitulation.
We get all the pain of the media attacks on us for daring to oppose President Precious Perfect without actually opposing President Precious Perfect. I don't think Confusius ever said Never leave a man who has staked his reputation on the claim that your plan will result in failure in charge of executing your plan, but he might have, if this celestial joyboy wasn't always obsessing about getting his weenie wet.
This is a case of being in the middle of the road where it's the most dangerous. Either deliver your deliverables to the Establishment elite, or deliver them to the populist rebels; but this shit by which you attempt to deliver to the Establishment, then fail, then go through the political damage of a shutdown without the political reward of a shutdown (that is, actual leverage over Obama), is, and please excuse my language here, For the Birds, and something only a (trigger alert) actual Bird Brain would support.
Here's a bit of trivia: I'm told the very best office in all of Washington DC is the Speaker of the House's office. It looks, via a wide and imperial balcony, over the national Mall. A man might make a lot of decisions which are actually bad for his caucus to keep such a desirable blandishment.
A long time ago I read a trenchant criticism of McCain that always stuck with me. The writer (forget who) noted that there was indeed a "Reaganism" apart from the man himself -- that is, there were a series of propositions, ideas, and values which composed a freestanding "Reaganism" that was independent of the man himself. But was there such a McCainism? No, of course not. There was nothing to any "McCainism" except the idea, dearly held by McCain and his hangers-on, that John McCain really ought to be in charge.
The same criticism obviously applies to Boehner. There is no "Boehnerism," no coherent "Boehner Agenda," apart from the very dubious proposition that Only One Man can lead the country and thus and so Providence has delivered unto us John Boehner.
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