BOEHNER GOES OFF, SAYS DEMS ‘SNUFFING OUT’ AMERICA…. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) chatted yesterday with the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and apparently felt pretty good about himself.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, the Ohio Republican with his eye on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s gavel, said the tide is turning the GOP’s way.
“The American people have written off the Democrats,” Boehner said Monday in an interview with Tribune-Review editors and reporters. “They’re willing to look at us again.”
Well, “writing off” Dems seems more than a little excessive. More Americans consider themselves Democrats than Republicans; more Americans have a favorable opinion of Democrats than Republicans; more Americans trust Democrats to handle the biggest issues of the day than Republicans; and if one excludes Rasmussen, the generic congressional ballot looks pretty competitive for Democrats, too.
Boehner said the protests are emblematic of deep voter anger against Washington’s leaders.
“They’re snuffing out the America that I grew up in,” Boehner said. “Right now, we’ve got more Americans engaged in their government than at any time in our history. There’s a political rebellion brewing, and I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it since 1776.”
For a lawmaker who intends to be Speaker of the House, this is pretty irresponsible language. “Snuffing out”? Seriously?
The health care law passed in March “pushed most Americans over the edge,” Boehner said.
Well, no, not really. Public attitudes towards the health care law have improved in recent months, and opposition has fallen. The Affordable Care Act may have pushing most Republican members of Congress over the edge, but not “most Americans.”
Boehner proceeded to threaten to repeal health care reform, voiced his opposition to Wall Street reform, defended offshore coastal oil drilling and said Obama overreacted to the BP spill crisis, and voiced support for increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement — in order to get enough money to pay for the wars in the Middle East.
Quite an interview, to be sure.
