With Boehner’s bombshell, shutdown not likely for now

WASHINGTON - Republican House Speaker John Boehner sacrificed his job Friday, a wrenching decision he determined was the only way to spare the country the trauma of yet another government shutdown.

'More than anything, my first job as speaker is to protect the institution,” Boehner said at a news conference after making the stunning announcement he will quit the House on Oct. 30.

While the shutdown crisis may be averted for now, the forces of dysfunction that drove Boehner to leave remain and will likely bedevil the next speaker.

His decision came at a poignant moment. He announced it the day after an emotional high point for him, in which the onetime altar boy from Ohio hosted Pope Francis for an unprecedented address to a joint meeting of Congress.

The speaker's resignation - which he said he decided on only Friday morning - clears the way for passage of a stopgap spending bill to fund the federal government.

The legislation does not contain line-in-the-sand language to defund Planned Parenthood, which has become a high-profile cause on the right. But it goes only through mid-December.

A group of anti-Boehner insurgents had threatened that if the speaker capitulated to Democrats on the Planned Parenthood funding, they would move to topple him by forcing a vote to vacate the speaker's chair. Boehner will move a funding package that includes the Planned Parenthood funding, which is expected to be approved next week. But his announced resignation denies the rebels their best leverage.

In the meantime, the House Republican majority must pick a new leader, with Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., considered the most likely.

The No. 2 GOP leader, whom Boehner endorsed, has been in Congress less than 10 years. While he has widespread support in the Republican Conference, many believe he lacks the political and tactical gravitas to exert control over what has become an ungovernable House.

Boehner's leadership became a flash point in that battle, with a new generation of GOP lawmakers saying he has been too quick to capitulate to President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress.

Obama 'has run circles around us since John Boehner was speaker of the House. I think it's a victory for the American people,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., one of those elected in the 2010 midterm elections.

In his speech the day before Boehner's announcement, the pope decried the partisan and ideological warfare that now often defines and paralyzes the American political system.

Yet, if anything, that polarization appears to be accelerating with the approach of the 2016 presidential election.

At the news conference, Boehner said he had been considering stepping down at the end of last year but that those plans were derailed by the surprise defeat of then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., in a Republican primary. More recently, he had thought that he might make his retirement announcement on Nov. 17, when he turns 66.

But after hearing the pope's address, 'last night, I started to think about this. And this morning, I woke up and I said my prayers, as I always do, and I decided, you know, today's the day I'm going to do this.”

The arc of Boehner's 25-year career in the House traces a particularly turbulent period for the institution. The job of speaker used to be one of great job security, but Boehner is the sixth in a row to leave it amid reversals or scandal.

What makes Boehner different, however, is the fact that the pressures that led to his ouster came strictly from within his own party.

Boehner's fortunes in the House have been a series of ups and downs. He was brought into the leadership fold early, only to be expelled in a rank-and-file rebellion, and then began a rise back into leadership.

That culminated with the historic 63-seat gain in 2010 that propelled Republicans into the majority and handed Boehner the speaker's gavel.

Almost immediately, however, several dozen new Republicans who had aligned with the tea party movement began clashing with him.

Boehner demurred on how his leadership will be remembered.

'I'm a regular guy with a big job. And I never thought I'd be in Congress, much less I'd ever be speaker,” he said.

'But people know me as being fair, being honest, being straightforward and trying to do the right thing every day on behalf of the country. I don't need any more than that.”