[mrsmith]

Bah. POLITICO drivel.

It’s an attempt to get Boehner to negotiate on appropriate terms with the conservatives who make up nearly half of his caucus.
There are now 50 or 60 organized members whose votes he has to earn with terms they’ll accept.
The conservatives are organized and are acutely aware of what happened to Cantor for ignoring his conservative constituency.

The media and big donors hate the idea of politicians representing their voters.

[Omaha Note]

It’s an attempt to get Boehner to negotiate on appropriate terms with the conservatives who make up nearly half of his caucus.

I read it in just the opposite way. Unless I misunderstand what "appropriate terms" would include, I took this as laying the groundwork for Boehner to declare permanent war on the house conservatives and get the needed votes from democrats.

The last I heard, there was a bill that was passed at the House and waiting to go to reconciliation with the Senate. I don't see how Boehner ducks taking action on that without first changing the subject to just how disruptive and intolerable the conservatives are, and how the reasonable bipartisan statesmen will have come in and save the day, by whatever means necessary.

I think the Washington establishment can see the writing on the wall and they know they have to move fast to get certain outcomes before the next election. I'm guessing they have calculated that the time has come to ditch the conservative base.

The one hope I have is that this backfires, and there are enough Republicans, principled or not, who are worried enough about the next election to want to avoid being seen as working with the Democrats to support Obama.

But I am not holding my breath. I'm sure there are plenty of people in Washington who realize that by virtue of Friday's events, there is no doubt that "war were declared." Though I'm not sure how many of them are Republicans.