Boehner’s Struggle Within Own Party Wounds House Leader
By Mark Silva - Oct 17, 2013
House Speaker John Boehner will have trouble winning the next fight after the way he lost this one.
The Republican leader finally acceded to the demands of the White House and Democratic-led Senate in an agreement to end a partial U.S. government shutdown and avert a debt crisis. This makes it tougher for him in the next fiscal debate pushed into January and February by the accord. His ability to get anything through his own House will be tested in the year ahead.
“We just didn’t win,” Boehner, 63, told a Cincinnati radio station yesterday. “We fought the good fight.”
From the start of the standoff with President Barack Obama -- with a faction of the House’s Tea Party-backed Republicans seeking to defund, delay or declaw the president’s health-care law -- Boehner confronted a dilemma that could undermine his grip on the leadership.
Ultimately, Congress’s resolution of the 16-day shutdown and a threat to U.S. borrowing authority says more about Boehner’s capacity to run the House for the rest of this session, through 2014, than about his ability to hold the reins of the chamber beyond that.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-16/boehner-s-struggle-within-own-party-wounds-house-leader.html