Is John Boehner finished as speaker of the House?

Boehner failed to get his Republican troops to fall in line behind his Plan B fiscal cliff proposal. Has he lost the ability to lead?

With his own caucus turning against him, House Speaker John Boehner may be losing his edge.
(Image credit: Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com)

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) suffered a stinging defeat late Thursday, when, at the last minute, he canceled a vote on his plan to avoid the fiscal cliff by extending Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans except those making more than $1 million a year. Boehner spent days pressuring his Republican colleagues into backing his proposal, known as Plan B, hoping it would give him leverage to get more concessions out of President Obama, who campaigned on a promise to let rates rise for households making more than $250,000 (this week he said he'd bend and agree to setting the threshold at $400,000). In the end, however, anti-tax conservatives refused to go along. Boehner said Friday that he didn't think the setback would cost him his leadership position — Republicans will decide on Jan. 3 who will be the speaker of the House in the next Congress. "They weren't taking that out on me," he said. "They were dealing with the perception that somebody might accuse them of raising taxes." Is he right to think his job is secure, or does this embarrassing defeat mean his days as the House GOP leader are almost over?

It looks like Boehner is history: Boehner figured passing Plan B would force Obama to accept "a deal more to the GOP's liking," says Rick Moran at The American Thinker. "Instead, his own caucus rejected him, castrated him, and tossed him to the wolves." This debacle made Boehner look "like a jellyfish," not a leader. If he can't get his team to support him now in a fight as important as this, "it's hard to see Boehner as speaker in the next Congress."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.