And those hardliners?
'When you get the members off the talking points you come to a simple conclusion: They don't face consequences for taking these hardline positions. When you hear members talk candidly about their biggest victory, it wasn’t winning the House in 2010. It was winning the state legislatures in 2010 because they were able to redraw their districts so they had many more conservative voters. The members get heat from the press but they don't get heat from back home.'
So the Speaker's afraid of the career consequences, nobody else wants the job, and the hardliners driving the truck through the guard rails don't face any electoral consequences. Sounds like a recipe for … well, just what we're seeing now.
Reshared post from +Cynthia S.
Excellent interview with #RobertCosta by +Ezra Klein
Robert Costa: When you get the members off the talking points you come to a simple conclusion: They don't face consequences for taking these hardline positions. When you hear members talk candidly about their biggest victory, it wasn’t winning the House in 2010. It was winning the state legislatures in 2010 because they were able to redraw their districts so they had many more conservative voters. The members get heat from the press but they don't get heat from back home.
Why Boehner doesn’t just ditch the hard right
‘What we’re seeing is the collapse of institutional Republican power,
Even Tip O'Neill didn't think he was Tip O'Neill. In his autobiography, he observed the changes in the House since the days of Sam Rayburn.
Case in point – before O'Neill became Speaker, the Democrats who joined the House in 1975 (the "Watergate Babies" of 1974) threw out three committee chairmen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_Babies