Boehner Gone!!

Ryan's cool. He's an actual climber. Did a bunch of stuff in Colorado iirc.

donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado

Oct 21, 2015 - 08:00am PT
Not really sad. I am enjoying watching the chaos and dysfunction the Republican Party is experiencing. The incompetent Tea Party electees, with ideologies best suited for the Dark Ages, are setting the stage for big gains for the Democrats in 2016......yeah!

Rick Alexander spent a lot of effort here on refuting Ryan's claims to being a prolific climber in a ST thread.

I ask, when has Libertarianism worked?
the answer is never, it always fails because the greedy take over and gain the power to oppress the masses.

If I were an optimist, I’d argue that this is the week the tea party movement lost its mojo, its grip on Congress and maybe even its hold on the Republican Party. A long-term, bipartisan budget and debt deal is the top piece of evidence that suggests a pivotal moment could be at hand.

The possible agreement — the single most reassuring, stabilizing move the GOP could offer the country at this point — is under discussion at a time when the public seems to be losing interest in the confrontational, all-or-nothing tea party brand. A new Gallup poll shows the populist protest movement at its lowest ebb since it emerged in 2009 to thwart President Obama and his policies on taxes, spending and health care. Only 17% of Americans now say they are tea party supporters while a record 54% say they are neither supporters nor opponents.

The tea party never had anything close to majority backing in America — in fact, its high water mark was less than a third, 32%, exactly five years ago. And yet its wins in very conservative House districts and a few Senate races have often allowed it to dictate terms to the GOP, Congress, and the entire nation.

Tea party lawmakers are characterized by their tolerance for chaos, brinksmanship and — to be blunt — disregard for taxpayer dollars and the U.S. economy even as they talk a good game about their diehard commitment to lower taxes, less spending, smaller government and a better economy. Over the past few years, the country has lost considerable money, time, productivity and mental bandwidth — plus its top credit rating — while lurching from crisis to crisis, repeatedly coming to the brink of debt defaults and government shutdowns, and in 2013 enduring an actual shutdown that lasted two weeks.

But this week the House Freedom Caucus, comprising less than one-tenth of the 435-member House, could be on the losing end of a couple of fights. And that would signal it is not the force it used to be. The irony is that one of the major factors leading to this moment is the movement’s success in ousting leaders it believes are too willing to compromise. House Speaker John Boehner became so frustrated that he is leaving Congress at the end of the week — and with that freedom, was trying to negotiate a major budget and debt deal on his way out the door.

Such a deal would avert a catastrophic debt default next week and set spending parameters until 2017 — taking budget fights off the table for the rest of Obama’s term. So much for tea party leverage. Obstructionists in both chambers like to hold both debt and budget bills hostage to all kinds of other demands, from defunding Planned Parenthood to repealing the Affordable Care Act, and a deal would rob them of those opportunities.