Tea Party Leader: Boehner looks "like a fool"

Tea Party leader: Boehner looks ‘like a fool,’ should be defeated in a primary – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

TRENDING: Tea Party leader: Boehner looks 'like a fool,' should be defeated in a primary
By: CNN Political Producer Shannon Travis


Washington (CNN) – In another display of the Tea Party movement turning on its own ideological supporters, the head of one prominent group has said that House Speaker John Boehner looks “like a fool” as House Republicans push spending cuts in their budget proposal. And that leader wants the Tea Party movement to set a goal for 2012: to defeat Boehner in a Republican primary.

To help make his point, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips even referenced a story currently feeding a pop-culture frenzy.

“Charlie Sheen is now making more sense than John Boehner,” Phillips wrote in a post to his group’s website (link to: teapartynation.com) on Wednesday.

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Mr. Phillips' comments only affirm a lack of understanding of leadership in general and governance in particular. It is easy to throw rhetorical bombs when one has few stakes involved from one's not being in the arena of governance. There, one can readily advocate ideological "purity" with little consequence. From the sidelines, there are no constituents to be served and no accountability from elections.

In representative government, things are quite different. Sufficient consensus must be forged if legislation is to be adopted. Consensus-forming requires trade-offs. Ideological purity, when that purity commands less than sufficiently broad support and that lack of support cannot be overcome in a timely basis, can impede effective governance. There are times when political leaders need to take principled stands, when no deal is better than a bad one. But those issues should be carefully chosen. Doing so on every issue is counterproductive and the antithesis of leadership. Instead, it's a sure means of self-isolation into irrelevance.

Mr. Phillips would do well to read President Reagan's autobiography. President Reagan succeeded precisely because he did not pursue a "take no prisoners" approach on every single issue of consequence. Instead, he understood the bigger picture, how to fit issues into the larger context, and when to compromise.

In his autobiography, President Reagan explained:

I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: 'I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.' ...If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.

In terms of Congressman Boehner's 14-day continuing resolution, he successfully shifted the course from spending at current levels to spending at a reduced level. That's no small accomplishment, even as political differences run very deep at present.

Very good post donsutherland1. It is funny that most of the tea party members idolize Reagan, but I honestly do not think they would be happy with him right now if he was in power. He is not far right enough for their standards.

One tea party group not happy with Boehner doesn't mean the majority is calling for his head.

I think he's doing a fine job, all things considered.

I think it is acceptable that criticism of the GOP can happen because of its lack of asking for more than 100 billion. That being said, it is also easy for a blogger and a Tea Party activist to forget the realities of governance in this country because they are political outsiders.