Once the president makes it clear that American bonds are absolutely secure, he must decide how he will spend the rest of the revenue. Obama has already indicated that Social Security payments are in danger—and when the checks stop arriving, Washington will hear from millions of pensioners. If the Tea Party continues to resist a genuine compromise at that point, Boehner will have little choice but to ram the bill through the House with the aid of Democratic votes. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put it, further intransigence would assure that the “Republican brand” will be damaged goods for a very long time to come.
Boehner’s collapse, moreover, may teach Republicans a sobering lesson about the modern Constitution. Quite simply, it takes much more than the momentary control of the House to force America into the embrace of a radically new governing philosophy. It takes a president like Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan to launch such an effort—and even they cannot succeed decisively unless they can carry both houses of Congress in repeated elections.
The failures of Boehner and Gingrich show that there is no shortcut to this arduous process. Memories are short, but not that short. After two failed efforts in 20 years, it may be a generation or more before another movement tries to use the House to dictate terms to the Senate and president. The current impasse is not the prologue to some escalating congressional breakdown. It is the end of Gingrich’s dream of a constitutional putsch by the House of Representatives.
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