Hours after House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced he would retire, his once right-hand man former Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., blamed conservatives for their unrealistic expecations in an op-ed for the New York Times.
Cantor, who was ousted from his leadership role by a Tea Party conservative challenger in a 2014 primary, blasted “fellow conservatives” for trying to “enact into law a conservative vision for government, without compromise.”
[S]omewhere along the road, a number of voices on the right began demanding that the Republican Congress not only block Mr. Obama’s agenda but enact a reversal of his policies. They took to the airwaves and the Internet and pronounced that congressional Republicans could undo the president’s agenda — with him still in office, mind you — and enact into law a conservative vision for government, without compromise.
Strangely, according to these voices, the only reason that was not occurring had nothing to do with the fact that the president was unlikely to repeal his own laws, or that under the Constitution, absent the assent of the president or two-thirds of both houses of Congress, you cannot make law. The problem was a lack of will on the part of congressional Republican leaders.
Now we see that these same voices have turned to the threat of a government shutdown or a default on the debt as the means by which we can force President Obama to agree to their demands. I wonder what they would have said, if during the last two years of President Bush’s term, the Democratic congressional majority had tried something similar.
The tragedy here is that these voices have not been honest with our fellow conservatives. They have not been honest about what can be accomplished when your party controls Congress, but not the White House. As a result we missed chances to achieve important policies for the good of the country.
Cantor was thought to be Boehner’s successor until his stunning defeat in last year’s primary. He is not alone in blaming conservatives for Boehner’s downfall — many Boehner allies yesterday said the same, accusing them of not being team players.
For their part, conservative House members were angry with Boehner because he often went around them and worked with Democrats to pass spending bills.
In the op-ed, Cantor says Republicans should fight, but “fight smartly.”
“I have never heard of a football team that won by throwing only Hail Mary passes, yet that is what is being demanded of Republican leaders today. Victory on the field is more often a result of three yards and a cloud of dust,” he writes.
“In politics this means incremental progress, winning hearts and minds before winning the vote — the kind of governance Ronald Reagan perfected.”
