You could be a total moron and get elected.

April 2, 2021 3:56 PM

Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates, and the Birth of GOP Paranoia

An excerpt from John Boehner's upcoming memoir (SLPolitico)

posted by box (59 comments total)

It's fun to watch Boehner complain about these assholes and just call them assholes, but on the other hand, fuck him: he was actively complicit in making everything worse for years and years.
posted by mightygodking at 4:13 PM on April 2, 2021 [146 favorites]

It's fun to watch Boehner complain about these assholes and just call them assholes, but on the other hand, fuck him: he was actively complicit in making everything worse for years and years.

this is my feeling as well, although it was funny to hear him saying "go fuck yourself Ted Cruz" and I hope that just enters the discourse
posted by dismas at 4:28 PM on April 2, 2021 [29 favorites]

I guess this explains why he always looked like he was about to cry.
posted by Slothrup at 4:34 PM on April 2, 2021 [6 favorites]

'He could come off as lecturing and haughty.' Ugh...
posted by Elmore at 4:42 PM on April 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

Thanks for posting this Box, I read it all the way through. And it was interesting and enlightening.
posted by Elmore at 4:43 PM on April 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

A haughty black man, eh Boner?
posted by Splunge at 4:45 PM on April 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

Wow. He is plowed. Drunk audiobook recording is a new one for me. Must be nice to be so goddamn rich you can do whatever outrageous thing floats into your walnutstained old noggin.
posted by Don Pepino at 4:47 PM on April 2, 2021 [25 favorites]

They've been paranoid since they worried that their slaves would rise up in insurrection and murder them in their beds, and set out the slave patrols to keep them safe.
posted by mikelieman at 4:49 PM on April 2, 2021 [34 favorites]

The "Conservatives" trying to kind of maybe distance themselves from Trump is interesting, and way too late.
posted by Elmore at 4:49 PM on April 2, 2021 [6 favorites]

I guess this explains why he always looked like he was about to cry.


Those glassy eyes weren’t due to his sensitivity. There’s better than an even chance that anytime you saw him, he’d just finished his third cocktail.
posted by darkstar at 4:58 PM on April 2, 2021 [6 favorites]

A haughty black man, eh Boner?

He put "uppity" into thesaurus.com.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:13 PM on April 2, 2021 [13 favorites]

I do have some sympathy for the old-school Republicans who basically have had their party yanked out from under them. That has to be a disconcerting experience and you can tell that a lot of them are really troubled by the current direction. But at the same time, they were all perfectly happy to ride the gravy train and help the kooks for as long as it was benefiting them, so screw them.

All of the attempts at reputation salvaging lately have been interesting to watch, especially the officials who were complicit in the botched Covid response.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:44 PM on April 2, 2021 [15 favorites]

I do have some sympathy for the old-school Republicans who basically have had their party yanked out from under them.

I don’t. Most of what’s left of old-school republicans rode in on Reagan’s and Gingrich’s coattails, and anyone paying attention back then could (and did) predict the eventual coming of today’s crop of murderous nutjobs, as a direct lineage from Gingrich’s gang.

What we’re getting today was utterly predictable. No one, especially republicans, should act surprised.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:00 PM on April 2, 2021 [92 favorites]

This is yet more evidence to my theory of the Blank Weird Nineties—that all of the things on display here, from paranoia to irredentism to culture war—were pioneered in the 1990s, but have just been forgotten thanks to the breakout of the forever war. The 1990s were a profoundly weird and paranoid and conflicted time; there’s a reason so much of the mental framework of present day conspiracist thinking focuses on the Clintons specifically.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:06 PM on April 2, 2021 [38 favorites]

The cattiness is enjoyable. But he was also complicit. Also note him congratulating himself on Bachmann?
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:11 PM on April 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

This is like a straightfaced reenactment of The Onion's classic "The Republican Party Cannot Stand By And Let Obamacare Destroy This Country vs. Help Me".

"Help me. Help me make this end. Don’t reelect these people. Reelect good, normal people and I promise I’ll be a good speaker from now on. I won’t lie down for the president by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ll work with him if it makes sense and I’ll fight him when it makes sense. That’s how it should be. That’s how it will be if you help me destroy this menace.

I know I helped create this monster, and I apologize. I am so, so sorry. I thought I could control it, but I was wrong. I just need your help to defeat it. Will somebody please help me? Please? Please? Anyone?"
posted by mhoye at 6:21 PM on April 2, 2021 [31 favorites]

Boehner is making a lot of money off pushing (partially) legalized marijuana. It's great to hear a Republican tell Cruz to fuck off, but something to keep in mind when thinking about what he and others in the GOP have done to push the drug war, and the continued incarceration of many Black people.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:43 PM on April 2, 2021 [21 favorites]

Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/us/politics/john-boehner-marijuana-cannabis.html
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:44 PM on April 2, 2021

Y'know, someone really ought to tell Republicans that being educated or intelligent isn't a de facto drawback in a public official. Haughty? Lecturing? Obama was faced with the same morons you were, mate. He was a former professor dealing with a racist horde.

The insight is so close, but so desperately far.
posted by erinfern at 7:46 PM on April 2, 2021 [13 favorites]

“Get the right people on the bus, and help them find the right seat" really grossed me out, I have to say.
posted by queensissy at 8:03 PM on April 2, 2021 [9 favorites]

What I find interesting about this is that Roger Ailes believed the bull that they were putting out there.

At this time I was reading a lot of sites like Red State because I wanted to get a broader view of the political landscape. And they absolutely thought that Boehner was way too liberal, etc. etc. etc.
posted by rednikki at 8:16 PM on April 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

Wow, I actually want to see this as a movie.
posted by Toddles at 9:02 PM on April 2, 2021

Surely, that's Cave Johnson doing his best John Boehner, right?
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 9:45 PM on April 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

His spray tan was the harbinger of trump.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:27 PM on April 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

Any old school moderate Republicans fretting over the state of their party have a perfectly comfortable home in the neo-liberal center-right Democratic party.

Boehner seems to be glossing over the media landscape of 1991. Rush was in syndication then and the fairness doctrine had been yanked under Reagan. There were plenty of insane publications from evangelical groups and the NRA dropping in millions of mailboxes across the country every day.

And "haughty", just... wow.
posted by St. Oops at 10:44 PM on April 2, 2021 [8 favorites]

Any old school moderate Republicans fretting over the state of their party have a perfectly comfortable home in the neo-liberal center-right Democratic party.

For the love of fuck, no. This idea that somehow the Democrats and Republicans are the same really needs to go die in a fire already.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:19 PM on April 2, 2021 [48 favorites]

I appreciate the better-late-than-never-I-guess honesty about his own party, and enjoy the "fuck Ted Cruz" bit immensely, but I'll be spending my money to read this jackass's point of view approximately never. He helped make his party into the basket of loonies and assholes it is now, and if he still doesn't understand how his political career helped pave the way for the modern Republican party, he's as dumb as I always thought he was.
posted by biogeo at 12:23 AM on April 3, 2021 [22 favorites]

The part where Ailes apparently went all in on the batshit explains a lot. But really this book will probably be more valuable (such as it is) as an historical document 20 (or 200) years from now, being a first hand front row account of one of the last of the Nixon-Reagan Republicans watching his party get devoured by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. We're too close to (in the middle of) it now, his obliviousness and/or dissembling is just grating and infuriating.
posted by soundguy99 at 1:29 AM on April 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

This makes me think of Ayn Rand. I dislike her and her philosophy as much as the next mefite, but I'll never deny that I found her books entertaining and compelling when I was younger...

... in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, an established class of aristocratic villains is slowly supplanted by a stupider, more violent, and cruder class of villains. Ralston Holcombe and Guy Francon are replaced by Gus Webb and the other modernist thugs, and James Taggart and Lillian Rearden are supplanted by Cuffy Meigs and Wesley Mouch. And the sad, old villains sit around in their drawing rooms, sipping wine, and wondering what the heck happened to their once-great villain clubs.

It's weird to see this process happen in real life. I have no idea if the GOP will be able to reform itself, disintegrate entirely, or make some grab at true fascist power. Whatever happens, it's probably going to suck.
posted by Chronorin at 1:49 AM on April 3, 2021 [15 favorites]

I always think back to the 80s when televangelists started buying up all the late night cable time that had been filled with old movies and classic TV. Suddenly there was our on hour of ugly, judgemental people sitting around living rooms, taking turns to spout self righteous BS with everyone else nodding and stroking.

People donated huge sums of money to the cause of... getting more of it? You KNEW it wouldn't take long for someone to weaponize the stupidity.

Piss on the 80s. Even Bob-Fucking-Dylan was evangelizing, then onboard with the right wing - declaring himself proudly and deliberately blinkered with Neighbourhood Bully. The cultural shift felt horribly deep and icky.
posted by bonobothegreat at 4:31 AM on April 3, 2021 [8 favorites]

I do have some sympathy for the old-school Republicans who basically have had their party yanked out from under them.

Please. They joined in with the yanking. No sympathy here.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:38 AM on April 3, 2021 [10 favorites]

I'm probably not gonna assume that John Boehner is a wholly reliable narrator here.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:52 AM on April 3, 2021 [10 favorites]

No he is. Ted Cruz's college roommate has come forward with information that Ted Cruz can quite adeptly fuck himself.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:18 AM on April 3, 2021 [5 favorites]

I imagine everyone who writes this sort of memoir, thinks that people will one day shake their heads sadly at how they were treated just as they do when reading about Socrates' Apology, or Tacitus talking about suffering under the emperors.

Instead, I suspect they get tossed in the category of awkward explanations from implicated officials that try for some form or historical erasure of their actions, but just remind us of what utter feckers they were.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 7:32 AM on April 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

Boehner's current bleat is an example of a now common political whine by some right wing figures. Former elected officials and talking heads are making up stories that they are somehow victims of the "new" fascist Republican party. The reality is that they were kicked out of Trumpworld and they want to pretend that Trump's ascendancy was not their responsibility. As many have already pointed out, it's complete bull crap.

These false narratives have a common thread. They pick a point in the last ten years or so and claim before that time everything was reasonable and conservative values were not equivalent to white nationalist ideology. In reality Nixon and Reagan instigated the transition of conservative politics to overt fascism. Trumpism has deep historical roots.

Nixon had the "Southern Strategy" and Reagan declared "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem". Combine racism and rejection of democratic institutions together and let it fester for 50 years and you get Trump. Conservative apologists were fine with covert racist and crypto-fascist politics, they just can't face the obscene reality they created.
posted by Metacircular at 7:56 AM on April 3, 2021 [39 favorites]

Trigger warning: this is written by Boehner and is at best an overly generous view of the Crazytrain from the replacement engineer.
posted by Nanukthedog at 8:02 AM on April 3, 2021 [4 favorites]

I’m interested in reading this, but don’t want to give him a dime, so feel this is a perfect time to turn to book piracy.
posted by corb at 8:50 AM on April 3, 2021 [6 favorites]

Boehner spends a whole lot of time lamenting the loss of the position, power, and influence that he felt he deserved, which seems to concern him more than the current state or future of the country.

They pick a point in the last ten years or so and claim before that time everything was reasonable and conservative values were not equivalent to white nationalist ideology.

Yeah. That part. I especially enjoyed his portrayal Murdoch and Ailes as his perfectly reasonable, fun buddies until sometime during the Obama administration.

posted by evidenceofabsence at 8:59 AM on April 3, 2021 [18 favorites]

@jonathanvswan: When @SpeakerBoehner was recording his audiobook I was told by sources that during these wine-soaked sessions he would deviate from the book’s text and insert random violent attacks on @tedcruz. Well, here’s some tape (listen to the end):
posted by Going To Maine at 10:04 AM on April 3, 2021 [5 favorites]

Any old school moderate Republicans fretting over the state of their party have a perfectly comfortable home in the neo-liberal center-right Democratic party.

For the love of fuck, no. This idea that somehow the Democrats and Republicans are the same really needs to go die in a fire already.

That's not the contention. (I mean, it's MY contention, but that's not what St. Oops is saying here) If you're a Republican who's been running on a Reagan-esque platform for forty years, it's possible that the national party has shifted so far out from under you that it's not recognizable any more. Ignoring, for the moment, the fact that you yourself are almost certainly complicit in this shift, let's pretend that you've just been regurgitating the same set of economic talking points since the early 1908's, and you're actually uncomfortable with the national GOP's rightward skid into conspiracy theories, gun fetishism, and open white supremacy. Where's your group of modern contemporaries?

They're running under the Democratic ticket in swing states. They're the Claire McCaskills and the Joe Manchins of the country, trying to straddle a razor-thin edge, not outright calling for building a border wall, but also not doing anything about income inequality or police brutality. In the year of our lord 2021, if you're not accusing Barack Obama of being a secret Communist plant who wants to poison our children by fluoridating the water, then by gum, you're a de facto Democrat. They're not doing especially well in the long game, because they're relying on the frothing masses of the GOP to cross the aisle to vote for them and are losing ground as the divide between the Fox News reality and actual reality widens, but they're definitely out there. In fact, it's a pretty sweet spot to occupy: if you're the kind of person who identified as a lifelong conservative until the GOP went batshit, you're probably exactly the sort of mealy-mouthed centrist that the Dems freaking LOVE to nominate for presidential elections because they don't understand that the mythical bloc of centrist voters deciding elections ceased to exist in 1998.
posted by Mayor West at 10:16 AM on April 3, 2021 [17 favorites]

Last I heard, moderate Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination and won the presidency by 7 million votes. And his agenda since being elected has been so progressive that most of those ol' school, erstwhile Republicans oppose it.

No one is a "de facto" Democrat, so as NoxAeternum said, can we please stop using any of the #NeverTrump or other former Republicans to try to take outdated swipes at Biden or the current agenda of the Democratic Party.
posted by PhineasGage at 10:55 AM on April 3, 2021 [8 favorites]

You could be a total moron and get elected

Like we didn't know
posted by y2karl at 11:02 AM on April 3, 2021 [4 favorites]

When I look out over the American political landscape today, admittedly from afar, I see three distinct and dominant camps: delusional MAGA reactionaries, bougie friends of capital, and pinko SJWs. Naturally there's a spectrum and fringe camps and true independants, but you can pour 95% of today's GOP in the first camp and oh 90% of the Democratic leadership in the second. The third camp has strong popular appeal among a public that is partly disenfranchised, but can claim several of the country's most popular politicians.
How much light is there really between Andrew Cuomo's and Mitt Romney's ideological positions, really?
(All this being said, I am encouraged by the progress being made in Biden's first 100 days. Oh, and Boehner definitely helped pitch the MAGA camp.)
posted by St. Oops at 11:32 AM on April 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

The view described above is, I think, a sort of typical leftist view of politics, and one that I often share. In other words, one that resulted in Bernie Sanders getting the minority of the popular vote within his primary campaign - not because his voters were disenfranchised but because they didn’t exist. I would suggest, thus, that while it is an easy and compelling view to hold it also misses some essentials.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:49 AM on April 3, 2021 [4 favorites]

Of course, also coming from the left side of the aisle I would say that Boehner is not, in this except, doing much introspection about good item role in building the MAGA tent.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:51 AM on April 3, 2021

Yeah, total morons who want to blow up Washington were supposed to be the base of the republican party, not the candidates!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:19 PM on April 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

I think for socialist leftists (and here I am distinguishing the socialist Bernieite left from the progressive, Warrenite left) there is obviously a lot of support there. Even if Bernie doesn't carry a majority of the primary voters, his policies seem more popular than he is.

I think even among the Warrenites and centrists, there is support for many socialist left policies. It's just a matter of whether you feel that incremental progress is a means to an end, or whether you think incrementalism is selling out your principles.

Most of Bernie's policies appeal to me. But I favor an incrementalist "progressive" approach to getting there, because I think that is more in alignment with the political realities of our country. (I do appreciate shifting the Overton Window whenever possible, though.)
posted by darkstar at 3:12 PM on April 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

I read this Politico article as soon as it came out because I'm from Cincinnati and have Strong Opinions (of the left-wing variety) about Cincinnati-area conservatives like John Boehner, who I think embodies a lot of classically Cincinnati conservative political traits

It's weird to read an article that both annoys me and fascinates me at the same time, which was my feeling through reading this. On the one hand, this article is such ahistorical revisionism that ignores any of the seeds planted between Goldwater in the 60s and Gingrinch in the 90s that gave way to conspiratorial salt the earth politics. But on the other hand, the story about how Michele Bachman played him was completely fascinating for his analysis on how power was flowing differently compared to when he entered politics.

Boehner's politics suck hard core, but I finished the essay thinking I might end up reading his book anyway because at the heart of all politics is power analysis (who has it now, who is gaining it, who is losing it, how it's consolidated, how it's shared, how the current tactics for accruing power are different than before), and it was interesting to read about that through Boehner's perch.
posted by mostly vowels at 3:38 PM on April 3, 2021 [12 favorites]

That scoundrel. I wouldn’t read his book if he paid me.
posted by Orthodox Humanoid at 5:50 PM on April 3, 2021

Yeah, I do love hearing his internal perspective on how this has all played out. Palace intrigue is great. I definitely do not feel bad for this guy though. He played with fire at the highest levels and got burned by some new jocks who were marginally better at the power game. Good game, so sad, etc.

Fundamentally his values are at opposition with mine, and he's not useful as a person who can help make my world happen, so I'd rather he get out of the way as fast as possible. Leave the whinging for your pool party.
posted by thebigdeadwaltz at 5:56 PM on April 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

Of sympathy, I have none.
posted by Pouteria at 8:48 PM on April 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

> “Get the right people on the bus, and help them find the right seat" really grossed me out

I *think* that's supposed to be a Good To Great reference, but in a political context it's (at best) tone-deaf.
posted by regularfry at 4:24 AM on April 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

The "Conservatives" trying to kind of maybe distance themselves from Trump is interesting, and way too late.

As always, it's really just their way of saying "Shhh! Don't say the quiet part out loud!"
posted by Philofacts at 11:57 AM on April 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

> “Get the right people on the bus, and help them find the right seat" really grossed me out

It's not like he has ridden on public transit that often since his larval instar, so there is that.
posted by y2karl at 12:14 PM on April 4, 2021

Good To Great reference

Yeah, I know what he was saying, but that's a hell of a way to say it here.
posted by queensissy at 2:16 PM on April 4, 2021

It's weird to read an article that both annoys me and fascinates me at the same time, which was my feeling through reading this. On the one hand, this article is such ahistorical revisionism that ignores any of the seeds planted between Goldwater in the 60s and Gingrinch in the 90s that gave way to conspiratorial salt the earth politics.

Yes, reading about how Roger Ailes was a great guy who went mysteriously crazy suggests that Boehner isn’t really wrangling with what Ailes had been selling.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:46 PM on April 4, 2021 [5 favorites]

@ryangrim: There's a lot of competition, but my favorite Boehner story ever hasn't been told, I don't think, and I highly doubt he includes it in his memoir. So here goes:
posted by Going To Maine at 11:12 AM on April 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

Colbert interview.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:32 PM on April 14, 2021

Oh, and "speed round."
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:40 PM on April 14, 2021