Republican John Boehner of Ohio was propelled to the House speakership in the 2010 Tea Party wave, after 20 years representing suburban Cincinnati in the House. Boehner resigned in fall 2015 amid growing discontent from his own party members.
Now, he’s back to settle some scores.
Boehner, in an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, On the House, lays into the Tea Party insurgents. In 2010, two years into Barack Obama’s presidency, the anti-government stalwarts helped Republicans win 63 House seats and reclaim the majority the GOP lost in 2006.
“You could be a total moron and get elected just by having an R next to your name,” Boehner writes. Though known as a Republican partisan since his early House days and rise in the GOP leadership, Boehner trains most of his rhetorical fire on fellow conservatives, such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Fox News host Sean Hannity, among others.
After leaving office, the Ohio Republican cultivated a “regular guy” persona, smoking, lawn-mowing, and wedging profanity into every other sentence. That’s all back in full force with On the House. Here are some of the former speaker’s most juicy gripes.
1. The Tea Party was obsessed with ‘conspiracies and crusades.’
“These guys wanted 100 percent every time,” Boehner writes, deriding the grassroots movement for not seeking “legislative victories.” He readily admits to his own reputation within the movement: “a sellout, a dupe of the Democrats, and a traitor.” Boehner chalks it up to conservative media “brainwashing” his colleagues.
“Of course the truly nutty business about his birth certificate,” Boehner writes. “People really had been brainwashed into believing Barack Obama was some Manchurian candidate planning to betray America.”
2. Mark Levin dragged conservative media to ‘Looneyville.’
Boehner blames Levin for promoting Obama conspiracies and accuses Hannity and the late radio host Rush Limbaugh of following his lead. Boehner also laments that “my longtime friend” Roger Ailes led Fox News in the same direction after he “got swept into the conspiracies and the paranoia and became an almost unrecognizable figure.”
“He told me he had a ‘safe room’ built so he couldn’t be spied on,” Boehner writes of Ailes’s obsession with the Obama administration. “His mansion was being protected by combat-ready security personnel, he said. There was a lot of conspiratorial talk. It was like he’d been reading whacked-out spy novels all weekend.”
3. Sean Hannity is ‘the worst.’
Boehner rants against Fox News, writing that it was created with the “wrong incentives.” He picks on Hannity the most and writes the radio-turned-cable star is a “nut.”
4. Michele Bachmann threatened to denounce Boehner on Hannity.
Then-rising star Bachmann confronted Boehner about wanting to serve on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. When Boehner turned her down, she threatened to denounce him on Fox News. Boehner relented and placed her on the House Intelligence Committee instead, a move he thinks worked out well for everyone.
“Michele Bachmann turned out to be a very focused, hardworking member — even though she spent a few months later in 2011 on a short-lived campaign for president,” he writes in a rare moment of praise. “She showed up to the committee, did her homework, and ended up winning over her fellow members with her dedication.”
5. Ted Cruz is a ‘lunatic.’
“There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless asshole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else,” Boehner writes about the 2016 Republican presidential candidate who, in 2013, waged a futile Senate filibuster to block funding for Obamacare. “Ladies and gentlemen, meet Senator Ted Cruz.”
6. Obama was ‘lecturing and haughty.’
Of course, Boehner doesn’t only go after Republicans. He also lays into the former president, whom he didn’t think made a serious effort to reach Republicans. Still, Boehner cuts Obama some slack on that front: “How do you find common cause with people who think you are a secret Kenyan Muslim traitor to America?”
