Mother Jones
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How did the Republican Party become a kamikaze club guided by a small handful of hostage-taking radicals hell-bent on causing chaos to ruin the presidency of Barack Obama? It wasn’t by the design of House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP congressional leadership. This came about because a small number of tea party back-benchers in the House and Senate, assisted by a well-financed network of right-wing organizations (some funded by the billionaire Koch Brothers), pushed an issue that was red meat for the GOP’s base—defunding Obamacare—and managed to hijack the party (even more than the tea party already had).
Let’s look at how the Boehner-led GOPers began this latest round of political battle. After Obama won reelection and the Democrats picked up 11 seats in the House last November, Boehner appeared ready to accept political reality. He observed,
It’s pretty clear that the president was re-elected. Obamacare is the law of the land. If we were to put Obamacare into the CR the bill funding the government, known as a continuing resolution and send it over to the Senate, we were risking shutting down the government. That is not our goal.
That is, Boehner had no desire to re-litigate Obamacare through the budget process.
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