Speaker John Boehner seems to be the only one crying this week. When the Republican Speaker of the House unexpectedly announced his resignation Friday morning, the right didn't try to suppress its excitement.
Since Boehner took over the speakership in 2011, he has faced vocal opposition from a group of hard-core conservatives. As Reuters explains, right-wing Republicans think Boehner is "too prone to compromise with Democrats." When Boehner was re-elected speaker in January, he faced opposition from 25 members of his own party, which Reuters reports is the "biggest such intra-party rebellion against a speaker candidate since 1859."
Boehner reportedly had planned to wait until the end of the year to step down as speaker and resign from Congress, but with mounting criticism from conservatives over a Planned Parenthood debate and a looming government shutdown, Boehner instead decided to call it quits at the end of October.
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