As of January 5, 2011, Congressman John Boehner of Cincinnati, Ohio, will be the new Speaker of the House of Representatives.
We are learning a great deal about John Boehner, and it is a strange portrait!
In newspaper interviews, and now on a “Sixty Minutes” discussion with Lesley Stahl of CBS, Boehner comes across as, to say the least, a “strange duck”!
This is a man who is known to have gone to tanning salons, and has an almost orange tinge to his skin, but now he denies that he has ever gone to a tanning salon.
This is a man who smokes like a fiend, two to three packs a day, and it is rumored, will allow smoking to be restored to the House of Representatives chamber, after it was banned as unseemly by present Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
This is a man who used to tend bar for his father, and is said to go the bars every night around dinner time.
This is a man whose wife chooses to live in Cincinnati, while her husband lives in Washington, DC.
This is a man with a frown often displayed, who can yell with the best, but also is a “weeper” to the point of appearing ridiculous.
Boehner talks about the “American dream”, and how hard he had to struggle, and told Lesley Stahl that he cannot go to any schools anymore and see young children, because it makes him cry to think how difficult it is for them to pursue the “American dream”. His experiences should, if anything, make him wish to do more to promote the “American dream”, but instead he wishes to cut spending for education and other social programs, making success even more difficult for future generations of children, if they are born poor. This just makes absolutely no sense, especially when one considers how Boehner associates with lobbyists who represent wealthy interests, and he has no problem promoting massive tax cuts for the wealthy!
Also, John Boehner rejects the idea of “compromise”, preferring to call it “common ground”, another very weird thing, as politics is the art of compromise. But to believe that Boehner and his party will promote “common ground” is to believe in the tooth fairy, as it is clear that the GOP has no intention of cooperating with President Obama, as after all, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said, the purpose of the Republican Party is to defeat Obama in 2012.