Boehner and McConnell

Max Ehrenfreund has plenty of blame for Republican leaders.

What Was John Boehner Thinking?. "The speaker could’ve always brought a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the government to a vote. He did not get overrun. He made a choice to sacrifice the interests of his party — not to mention the country as a whole — to the demands of a faction in his caucus, knowing full well that he’d get almost nothing out of a protracted negotiation with Democrats. As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Robert Costa, the Republican leadership had determined months ago that closing the government was futile."

"The conservative members of his caucus will be bolder in challenging his initiatives, and he will have to rely increasingly on Democrats to accomplish the basic tasks of governing. In the long run, the best thing would have been to demonstrate that the Tea Party cannot control the G.O.P. leadership, and that if they refuse to make reasonable demands, they’ll be shut out of the process altogether. That was the lesson Obama tried to convey, and it would have behooved Boehner to make sure it was received."

McConnell Totally Said No Before Saying No Was Cool. "McConnell has no right to say that about himself. He is has engaged in as much obstructionism as the worst of them, and his ideas are partly responsible for bringing Republicans to their current state of disarray."

"This is the kind of dealmaker McConnell is. He will make a deal or put a halt to legislative action altogether, depending where he believes the political advantage lies. It also seems that McConnell’s strategy of opposition has seriously damaged his party’s ability to develop and propose their own original ideas. Conservatives do have plenty of good ideas, but when constructive legislating is off the table for electoral reasons, it’s easy to speculate that legislators and their staffs will devote less time and fewer resources to thinking about those ideas — how to implement them and how to include them as part of a complete legislative agenda. "