Former House Speaker John Boehner has gone woke.
Attacking one’s conservative colleagues has long been a strategy to gain favor for the liberal establishment.
Boehner, now a lobbyist, is doing so in spades with the publication of his book, “On the House.”
The supposed tell-all memoir about his time as speaker during the Obama years hits bookstores this week.
Boehner, who likes to glorify and even cry about his successes (Remember, he actually said he could quit the Speakership because he personally had met the Pope and he didn’t need to do anything else), seems to forget the “little people” who made him.
In fact, it was the very Tea Party Revolt of 2010 that made his whole career – the same Tea Partyers today he slobbers, dribbles, and complains about.
It was that revolt that jettisoned Pelosi and the House Democrats, and gave the Republicans and Boehner, a big majority.
Today, Boehner in his new book slams them as crazies, conspiracy theorists, and through-and-through wing nuts.
One target for Boehner is the late Roger Ailes, who helped build the modern conservative movement with Fox News.
Rather than show some gratitude, Boehner paints a very negative picture of the media giant.
Newsmax talked with several conservative lawmakers who served with Boehner.
Many voiced surprise and some anger that he would belittle them a decade after saying nothing publicly for years about the Republican Class of ’10.
But with the Democrats owning everything in D.C. today – the White House and Congress – bashing fellow Republicans can be very good for business.
“John did not complain to us — the Tea Party folks — and how they made his life more difficult,” a Republican member of the 2010 class who requested anonymity told Newsmax.
“In fact, that first term, he was pretty gracious as we were the reason Republicans were back in the majority and he was the Speaker.”
"John Boehner was not a serious legislator," added the same former House member, "He was an unprincipled ‘good old boy’ who got along well with the other ‘good old boys. ‘
“He drank a lot of wine and smoked a lot of cigarettes,” he recalled.
Boehner’s heavy drinking was legendary and still is.
Fox News' Sean Hannity, another Boehner target, said he never met the man without a whiff of alcohol on his breath.
Boehner often showed up at Republican fundraisers after drinking, and proceeded to belittle donors and colleagues in a clumsy attempt to mimic a Don Rickles routine.
In “On the House,” Ohio Republican Boehner weighs in strongly against the 87-Member 2010 class of Republicans for their spirited conservatism and what he considered an unwillingness to compromise with then-President Barack Obama.
Noting that large numbers of his fellow Republicans came from the “Tea Party movement,” Boehner writes, “Since I was presiding over a large group of people who’d never sat in Congress, I felt I owed them a little tutorial on governing. I had to explain how to actually get things done. A lot of that went straight through the ears of most of them, especially the ones who didn’t have brains that got in the way.”
Stalwart conservative and former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who served with the former speaker told Newsmax: “I didn’t consider Boehner a true conservative and nobody else I knew did. He was more about cutting deals.”
But Rohrabacher also emphasized that “I cannot say he was hostile conservatives when he was minority leader or speaker. He certainly wasn’t hostile to me.”
Even liberals who like Boehner’s book wonder why he never complained about the so-called wing nuts that now take up so much space in his book — 10 years after the fact.
Rohrabacher said Boehner’s efforts ring hollow.
“He’s ingratiating himself to the people he thinks are the real power — the ‘establishment,’” Rohrabacher said.
The former speaker’s equally sharp words for Donald Trump (“He caused that bloody insurrection”) and Texas’ Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (“a reckless a--hole”) are further evidence of Boehner courting the Washington Swamp, Rohrabacher noted.
“I spent a great deal of time with John after we came to Congress in 2011,” recalled Todd Rokita, former U.S. Representative from Indiana and now its state attorney general.
But like other classmates, Rokita is disappointed by Boehner’s latest words on the “Tea Party” Republicans.
“John misunderstood the mandate of 2010,” he said, “In 2010, the voters were sending a very clear message that they wanted the opposite of where we were going under Barack Obama. And you couldn’t compromise with the Democrats. Time has proven the conservatives right.”
But Boehner does understand the politics of power.
Back in 2010 he needed conservative support and their money to win Congress and become House Speaker.
He courted them for his purposes back then, keeping mum about his disdain for them, until now.
Today, he needs Washington insiders to continue feathering his nest.
“Bartender, another bottle of merlot for me and my friends.”
“Here’s to you, John!”
How sad.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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