John Boehner Leads Republicans Into Political Little Big Horn

 By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown 

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In June of 1876, near Montana’s Little Big Horn River, five of the Seventh Cavalry’s companies were annihilated with 268 dead.  Lt. Colonel Custer, their leader, was also killed, all at the hands of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Tribes of America’s Great Plains. The Battle of Little Big Horn has been deemed one of the greatest battlefield blunders by an American Commander.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, the highest elected leader of the Republican Party, is headed for a similar annihilation at the hands of Barack Obama. It is a battle brought about by Boehner’s earlier unwillingness to fight a determined and deadly foe. Now John Boehner’s failed leadership may mortally wound the modern Republican Party.
How did we get here? John Boehner, at nearly every critical juncture, has raised the white flag of capitulation.
The first capitulation was not fighting for a permanent extension of the Bush Tax Cuts in 2010. At that time, the Republicans had their greatest political leverage. They had just recaptured the US House and made huge gains in the US Senate. Obama was saddled with 10 percent unemployment and the prospects of an even greater economic downturn if he refused the Republican’s offer. Instead of going for a permanent fix, he accepted an Obama “compromise” of a two year extension.
Speaker Boehner blinked, as he bragged to the Washington Post that the bill was “a good first step.”  It was a good first step toward Obama’s reelection and the defeat of the Republican agenda. This year, after Romney losing and losses of Republican numbers in the House of Representatives, Obama has virtually no incentive to again compromise on tax cuts. He never has to run for re-election again.
The second great capitulation to Obama came in the battle over the debt ceiling. If the Congress had refused to give Obama a blank check of continued spending, we wouldn’t face the fiscal cliff now. By timing the spending cuts/automatic sequestration with the Bush Tax cuts renewal, he single-handedly assured the tax cuts likely wouldn’t be extended.

House Republicans, riding the Tea Party movement, should have refused to increase the debt ceiling. Instead, we now have trillions more in debt, and America’s credit has been downgraded.
Liberals are giddy at the prospects of billions in increased tax revenue and dramatic cuts in discretionary defense spending.  Boehner didn’t even have the foresight to tie entitlement reform to the fiscal cliff.
So now he faces a Little Big Horn of his own making. Taxes will go up, and spending will be cut. And it’s likely Boehner and the Republicans will take all of the blame for the new recession that inevitably will result.
Boehner’s leadership has been so pathetic he hasn’t even attempted to defund Obamacare.
We are sick and tired of Boehner’s cowardice and Republican betrayals. It is time for Boehner to go. The so-called “Republican Leadership” is the problem.
It only took John Boehner a few hours after the Obama’s reelection to proclaim that he was ready to capitulate once more.
Marching in front of the television cameras the next morning, he said, in no uncertain terms, that he was ready, willing, and able to wave the flag of surrender without firing a shot: “Mr. President, this is your moment,” he said. “We want you to lead. Let’s find the common ground that has eluded us.”
Hours later, Barack Obama marched in front of the television cameras as well with a message of his own, a message he has already delivered far too many times: I’m moving hard to the left. I’m going to bring the United States to its knees, and if Republicans cooperate… that’s ‘compromise.’
That’s not leadership, Mr. Boehner, and you’re no leader.  When are you going to learn that you’ll never find “common ground” with this man?  When are you going to realize that Barack Obama doesn’t care that you want him “to lead?” Obama has come to fundamentally change the country.