Worth Quoting: Senator Harry Reid

US Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the Minorty Leader of the US Senate, worked with Speaker John Boehner in their capacities as leaders. It wasn't always easy, but not necessarily alwaysas acrimonious as it may have looked. Today Senator Reid posted the following statement on Facebook:

I have not always agreed and I wasn’t always happy with what Speaker John Boehner told me, but he never, ever misled me. We had a lot of dealings, so-called “back-channel” meetings. He never, ever told me something that wasn’t true and I accepted that. I got where I understood John very, very well. His word was always good.

By ousting a good man like Speaker Boehner—someone who understood the art of compromise—the party of Eisenhower and Reagan is no more. I just think it’s very, very sad that the Tea Party caucus that Republican leaders embraced to win in 2010 have now taken over control of the party.

From the bottom of my heart, I wish John Boehner the very best in the future.

I’ve read multiple times over the years that Boehner never promised anything he couldn’t deliver, but also that the radicals in his own caucus prevented him from being able to deliver much of anything. So, he increasingly had to turn to Democrats to get anything passed, which is part of the reason the US House under his speakership did so very little.

But Senator Reid mentioned the real heart of all this: The Republican Party willingly embraced their radical teabagger faction, and that’s what led to Boehner’s demise.

Republicans did it because they wanted to win, and nothing else mattered. Sure, they thought they could control the radicals, but that doesn’t excuse their being willing to put the entire country at risk just for short-term partisan gain: “Party First!” is Boehner’s true legacy.

However, the truth is that the party of Eisenhower and Reagan died a long time ago. What we’re seeing now is just the teabaggers who destroyed the party dancing on its grave in jubilant ecstasy, because they believe they triumphed in getting rid of their imagined “enemy”. The irony, of course, is that Boehner may very well have been the only thing keeping them in power.

What happens next will depend on what the radical Republicans so. They’ll never compromise on anything, not even the next Speaker, so the real question is: Will the radical Republicans’ “Party First!” mantra finally lead to their electoral defeat? For the good of the USA and the Constitution, I sincerely hope so.