Conservatives had the fight they’d been itching for. But they were going to lose – and badly. Boehner knew as much. But he couldn’t afford to be seen shaking his head from the hilltops as his soldiers were slaughtered below. So the speaker thrust himself into the trenches, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his members as they endured a shutdown-driven onslaught from the White House, the Senate, and the media. Boehner not only led his army into battle; he took a beating on the front lines.

His infantry ate it up. “It’s easier to follow somebody who you know is willing to fight,” Rep. Raul Labrador, another conservative who refused to vote for Boehner in January, said during the October fiscal crisis. With his stand against Obamacare, Labrador said, Boehner was suddenly revealing himself as “the leader we always wanted him to be.”

Freshman Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., another Boehner defector from January, added: “We’re all so proud of him right now.”

This newfound credibility among the House GOP’s insurgent wing gave Boehner the cover he needed on Oct. 16 when he announced, after all options had been exhausted, that House Republicans would have to surrender. They had “fought the good fight,” Boehner told his conference. But now, on the eve of the Treasury Department’s debt-limit deadline, the House would take up a Senate bill to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling.