Bob Franken: A Saner Boehner

Oct 07, 20150

Those who are so snobbish they pretend they don't know anything about country music probably wonder why every time someone prominent walks away from his high position, we say, "He's done a Johnny Paycheck." We riffraff are aware that Johnny Paycheck was a Grand Ole Opry star whose most famous song was "Take This Job and Shove It."

That's roughly what Speaker John Boehner is humming as he prepares to walk away from the soap-opera House of Representatives and the hard-right extremist members in his Republican House majority. They have continuously stabbed him in the front as well as the back as he's tried to wheel and deal with the opposition Democrats to actually keep things functioning.

Unfortunately for Boehner, his toughest opposition has come from the GOP true believers, who insist that the C-word, "compromise," equates with the T-word, "treason." They are adamant that they were elected to stand up for rigid principles and that bargaining with those who don't agree is a bigger sin than paralyzing the government if they don't get their way.

Boehner will stick around until the end of October. That will give him enough time to pass legislation to keep the government operating for a short time while others try to reach a budget accommodation. For that, he'll get cooperation from enough Democrats that he can thumb his nose or give some other gesture of defiance to the militants in his own party.

There are some other vital matters that require fast attention, but it's unclear whether he'll be able to help dispose of them; little things like a massive funding bill to keep highway infrastructure construction going, and the real biggie that would stop the United States from descending into degrading financial default. Once again, the debt ceiling will need to be raised, and once again the ultras are insisting they must get their way or they'll just let the unthinkable happen.

Even so, all of that will be overshadowed by the nasty intrigue of the battle to succeed him and to fill all the open slots below as the very ambitious leaders try to climb the ladder, and, of course, climb over each other. It won't be pretty. Fun to watch, but not pretty.

It wasn't particularly attractive to watch the reaction at the Values Voter Summit that was the gathering point for all the social fundamentalists meeting in Washington when word spread that Speaker Boehner would soon be Speaker no more. The crowd erupted into applause. No polite platitudes, just a celebration that one of their Satans had been deposed. What's amazing about that is that John Boehner was always one of them, a rock-hard conservative. However, he had this belief in negotiation as a way of achieving an agenda, and that meant to the true believers that he was a demon wimp.

But John Boehner soon will be long gone, chortling on some golf course or raking in the big bucks he'll get from some cushy job arranged by his corporate buddies. Wherever he ends up, his fellow House Republicans won't have him to kick around anymore. So perhaps he'll be mindful of another Johnny Paycheck ditty: the one titled, "I'm Not Looking Back Anymore."

(Bob Franken is a syndicated columnist.)

Distributed by King Features Synd.