WASHINGTON, DC — For some on Capitol Hill, it would appear that Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) was handed a whopper of a defeat this week. Boehner’s Republican-controlled House wasn’t able to get anything pushed through to fund the Department of Homeland Security that would also undermine President Barack Obama’s recent executive orders protecting four million or so undocumented immigrants in the U.S. But to Speaker Boehner, his party didn’t lose when they had to push a clean funding bill through the House — they won according to him.
“Wasting time and money is the new ‘leadership’,” Boehner told reporters late Monday night at Ben Franklin Lanes, a local bowling alley where Boehner and a few of his Republican colleagues play in a league with other politicos. “Sure, we could have just pushed a clean funding bill through from the very beginning,” Boehner said, his Miller High Life pressed to his lips, “but Republican leadership is all about brinksmanship and pandering to a base that has been whipped up into a fury over the past couple decades with virulent anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, and pretty much anti-everything-that’s-not-Republican now; it’s not about governance.”
Boehner’s teammate, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) told reporters that “This is what the American people expected from us when they gave us control of the entire Congressional body last year.” Gowdy said that “the American people watched us decry out of control government waste for six years under this administration, and then watched us spend dozens of millions of dollars investigating Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the IRS Tea Party thingy, and various other scandals and they still elected us.” Gowdy paused, then grinned, “They knew what they were getting into.”
One reporter asked Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) if he felt that playing politics with a government agency that his own party says is vital to national security was wise. “We’ve voted to repeal Obamacare about sixty times now. That flies in the face of conventional political wisdom, but we still got just enough votes in the just the right gerrymandered districts to maintain our control of the House.”
Reporters asked Speaker Boehner if he thought his caucus’ actions would imperil his party’s chances in the upcoming national election, where more moderate candidates win out over the more trenchantly partisan ones. “Pffft. You think we care about the national election,” Boehner asked as he slammed a whiskey back down his gullet. “Most of us have no desire to actually govern. We’re here collecting six figure paychecks, waiting out the clock to either be voted out by our rabid and angry fundamentalist base in a primary, or to when we can just leave Congress and head right to K-Street as a lobbyist.”
So are Republicans in Congress — particularly in the House — really not interested in their party controlling all three branches of government at the end of next year? “Oh sure,” Boehner said as he sidled up to a Tequila Sour. “It’d be completely awesome to have total control of the government, we could really gut the shit out of it then.” Boehner took a sip of his drink, “But then again, all this gridlock means we get to go out there and raise huge amounts of campaign donations, firing our rhetoric up into the stratosphere, accusing our political foes of all kinds of vile, un-American things.”
“Gridlock is good for business,” Scalise agreed. “And our business is gumming up the works, holding the country back, while telling Republican voters we’re actually defending a version of America that never existed,” he continued.
One reporter from The Houston Floor Mop Catalog and Daily Observer asked Boehner what is the top priority for his party and for his body of Congress in the next year. “That is a simple question with an easy answer,” he responded as he took sips from his after-bowling brandy. “We are going to focus on the big issues of the day. The ones that every American knows if we don’t address, we’re in a heap of trouble.”
Infrastructure? “No,” Boehner laughed. Education? “Oh sure, and let the government tell your kids the Earth isn’t 6,000 years old no matter how many times The Bible tells you so,” Boehner chided. Immigration reform? Environmental protections? “None of that crazy, left-wing crap. We’re sticking to the three pillars of Republican policy that every true, red-blooded, God-fearing patriot knows are the bedrock foundation of America. Abortion. Repealing Obamacare. Impeachment.”
“And we will spare no expense, and will spend as much time as we possibly can muster chasing these dogmatic fever dreams of ours,” Boehner said as he polished off the last of his after-brandy gin. “Because that’s what Republican leadership is — hypocritical, nonsensical, but extremely loud and angry.”
