Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) led his party into a fight it could not win, and then, with the GOP's poll numbers imploding, cut a last-minute deal that won Republicans none of what they wanted.
His reward for presiding over the mess? He may get to keep his job after all.
As the shutdown lumbered on, conventional wisdom held that Boehner had two mutually exclusive options. He could:
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1) Cut a deal with Democrats, losing most of his caucus in the process and triggering a revolt that would oust him from his leadership post.
2) Hold out indefinitely to appease the right, Democrats and economy be damned.
However, while conservatives broke with Boehner on the final vote, they lauded him for sticking with them until the bitter end. The speaker, bullied for much of the year by Tea Party conservatives, may have actually emerged from the mess with a firmer grip on power.
On Wednesday, Boehner told his caucus he would be bringing the Senate compromise up for a vote, saying they had "fought the good fight" but lost. He was greeted with a standing ovation, according to National Review's Jonathan Strong.
"He hung in there with us," Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), one of 144 nay votes on the final bill, told Strong. "He's been reluctant to go to these fights and now that we have stood up and fought for our values and he's been there with us, leading, I think his stock has risen tremendously."
Indeed, rather than accusing Boehner for joining the "surrender caucus," irate House members instead focused their anger on moderate Republicans who publicly and privately cast skepticism on what is widely believed to have been a baffling, deeply flawed strategy to defund ObamaCare. It was those members, they said, who gave Democrats their leverage and forced Boehner's hand.
Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) a member of the Tea Party Caucus, said Boehner had done all he could, but that a "whiner caucus" cost the GOP a potential win.
"It's pretty hard when he has a circle of 20 people that step up every day and say, 'Can we surrender today, Mr. Speaker? Can we just go away? Can we make it easy?'" he told National Review.
At a Wednesday lunch sponsored by the Heritage Foundation — whose Heritage Action affiliate urged lawmakers to vote against the final deal — conservative lawmakers echoed the same sentiment.
"I've actually been really proud of Speaker Boehner the last two and half weeks," Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) told the New York Times, adding, "If anybody should be kicked out, it's probably those Republicans — and not Speaker Boehner."
Notably, Labrador was one of 12 Republicans who did not vote for Boehner's second term as speaker back in January. By pushing the nation to the brink of default, though, Boehner may have finally won him over.
Or maybe he finally confirmed what many have suspected all along — that he'll carry the Tea Party's water so long as they let him remain speaker.
