Connecting some far-flung dots: The Bolsheviks, the GOP "blackmail caucus," Gov. Rauner and the speakers of the House in Springfield and Washington, D.C.

D R A F T

It wasn't exactly an inspiring weekend.

First, on Friday morning in Washington, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced his resignation. John Cassidy of the New Yorker caught the tone of the event with perfect pitch:

It’s hard not to feel some sympathy for John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, who on Friday announced his resignation from Congress, effective at the end of October. Some. You wouldn’t wish the job of leading hundreds of G.O.P. congressmen and congresswomen, many of them hailing from the Tea Party/foaming-at-the-mouth wing of the Republican movement, on your worst enemy.

Also catching the tone of the event was Paul Krugman of the New York Times, with an op-ed column on Boehner's resignation headlined "The Blackmail Caucus, a.k.a. the Republican Party."

Krugman says Boehner's tenure as House speaker "has been an era of budget blackmail, in which threats that Republicans will shut down the government or push it into default unless they get their way have become standard operating procedure." Cassidy, for his part, says Boehner was an old-fashioned bedrock conservative. But in today's political climate that wasn't enough:

Following the rise of Tea Party-backed candidates in the 2010 midterms, many Republicans wanted all-out war with the Obama Administration. Boehner found himself playing the role of Count Mirabeau, or, perhaps, Alexander Kerensky, a reformer rapidly outflanked by genuine revolutionaries. On a range of issues, from public spending to the debt limit to Obamacare, the ultras wanted to shut down the federal government. Boehner, well aware that Congress was already highly unpopular, resisted.

Interesting thought -- Kerensky, who led the Russian provisional government after the Tsar was overthrown in 1917, was consumed by the radicals brought to power in his own revolution.

That would be the Bolsheviks. We'll come back to them in a minute.

In the meantime in Springfield, late Friday afternoon Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's Department of Natural Resources formally announced the state museum facilities in Springfield, Rend Lake, Lewistown, Lockport and Chicago will close at the end of the month in spite of a prolonged public outcry to "Save the Illinois State Museum."

SPRINGFIELD, IL – The Illinois Department of Natural Resources announced today that the Illinois State Museum system and World Shooting and Recreational Complex near Sparta will close as scheduled Sept. 30 and will remain closed while the court case regarding the associated layoffs is arbitrated.

Due to the lack of a balanced budget, IDNR was set to lay off 107 bargaining unit employees effective Sept. 30. Those layoffs have been suspended indefinitely due to an agreement between the State of Illinois and labor unions representing employees affected. While employees will return to work, the facilities will remain closed to the public during the suspension.

Why is the museum closing? See if you can catch a whiff of blackmail in Rauner's explanation. On June 25, the Chicago Tribune reported:

Rauner's office, when asked to comment on the museum situation, stuck to the line it has offered in most recent public discourse about the state budget: Blame House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

"Speaker Madigan and the politicians he controls passed a budget that's unbalanced by $4 billion, and the governor is taking the appropriate steps to manage the hole in their budget proposal," a spokeswoman said via email.

Explained Steve Johnson, who covers arts and entertainment for the Trib and for some reason was assigned to report on the museum closing:

On June 3 and 12, Gov. Bruce Rauner threatened a series of cuts he said were intended to shave more than $820 million from a fiscal year 2016 state budget that is at least $3 billion in the red.

The Republican governor's stance in the current, complex budget stalemate has been fairly basic: The Democrats controlling the legislature passed an unbalanced budget that he cannot sign as is and must do what he can to fix.

Democrats contend that Rauner is using the proposed cuts as a bargaining tool and potential wedge to try to force concessions out of them on issues including stripping state employee unions of power.

Caught in the middle is a relatively small operation like the state museum system, overseen by the Department of Natural Resources. Its five branches are the natural history mothership, the Illinois State Museum in Springfield; the Dickson Mounds Museum and archaeological site in Lewiston; and three art galleries, Chicago and the affiliated artisans' shop, the Lockport Gallery, and the Southern Illinois Art and Artisans Center at Rend Lake.

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http://www.theglobalist.com/the-bolshevik-roots-of-the-u-s-tea-party/ Alexei Bayer is the Eastern Europe Editor of The Globalist.

The U.S. Tea Party movement most closely resembles its total ideological opposite – Russia’s intransigent Bolshevik Party. The Bolsheviks took power in revolutionary Russia in October 1917 and built the Soviet Union. The Tea Party grew out of the Republican Party. But no sooner did it emerge as a real force did it turn its venom on its political progenitor. Tea Party candidates started accusing mainstream Republicans of betraying the conservative cause and of being inclined to reach compromises with the hated Democrats. * * * his makes a mockery of the Tea Party’s self-identification as a “conservative” force. Traditional conservatives are people who trust the established order and are reluctant to tinker with it. Their core belief is that, for better or worse, the system has been shown to work. In contrast, reforms and innovations, however well-intended they might be, are by definition untested and risky. By this definition, the Tea Party is anything but a conservative movement. On the contrary, its members clearly hate the established order. The Tea Party is a radical, revolutionary movement much like the Bolsheviks who similarly wanted to sweep aside the existing order. While the Bolsheviks were left-wing radicals, the Tea Party consists of right-wing radicals.

Why is the speaker of the U.S. House stepping down?

... The Boehner era has been one in which Republicans have accepted no responsibility for helping to govern the country, in which they have opposed anything and everything the president proposes. What’s more, it has been an era of budget blackmail, in which threats that Republicans will shut down the government or push it into default unless they get their way have become standard operating procedure. it has been an era of budget blackmail, in which threats that Republicans will shut down the government or push it into default unless they get their way have become standard operating procedure. All in all, Republicans during the Boehner era fully justified the characterization offered by the political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, in their book “It’s Even Worse Than You Think.” Yes, the G.O.P. has become an “insurgent outlier” that is “ideologically extreme” and “unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science.” And Mr. Boehner did nothing to fight these tendencies. On the contrary, he catered to and fed the extremism.

https://www.facebook.com/peter.ellertsen/posts/1622234318037608?pnref=story Sept 26 at 12:48 p.m. As border staters, Peter, we know a thing or two about the idiocies of state politics, but Illinois make politics in KY and TN look like masterworks of efficiency, wisdom, and sweet reason. The clowns in Illinois beggar even the most vulgar of descriptions!

Generally I agree with you (altho' I'll match Ray Blanton with Blagojevich any day of the week)! But I also see Gov. Rauner as nationalizing state politics -- i.e. injecting extremist slash-and-burn, obstructionist tactics into a legislative process that had historically balanced Chicago, suburban and downstate interests in an unedifying but thoroughly pragmatic way. To misquote Rakove a little, he's like "nobody nobody sent." Nobody sent him -- he bought the election on his own dime. What Cook County regular Democrats and downstate Republicans always had in common was they were very practical-minded. Rauner doesn't have to be.

xxx added at 1:43 p.m.

Adds: Speaking of national politics, a piece by John Cassidy on the New Yorker website today comparing House Speaker Boehner to Kerensky. Some ironic similarities between Rauner's legislative tactics, the U.S. House Republicans and the Bolsheviks that brought down the Kerensky government in 1917. Plenty of differences, of course, but the similarities are thought-provoking. http://www.newyorker.com/.../john-boehner-a-man-out-of...

6:08 p.m.

Have you read "It's Even Worse Than It Looks" by Mann and Ornstein? The title is a little over the top, IMO, but it struck me as a balanced, sober analysis that makes a similar point -- the Tea Party wing of the GOP is an outlier pursuing obstructionist tactics that undermine the political system in much the same way way the Bolsheviks undermined Alexander Kerensky's provisional republic in 1917. At the risk of telling you what you already know, here's a link to a New Yorker review with a good summary and links. http://www.newyorker.com/news/hendrik-hertzberg/naked-truths

Hendrick Hertzberg May 30, 2012 "Naked Truths" that the emperor in question is not just buck naked but scrofulous and syphilitic

Thomas E. Mann, a luminary of the ever so slightly left-of-center Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein, an ornament of the somewhat more firmly right-of-center American Enterprise Institute, We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_print.html April 27, 2012 -- Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

Rich Miller of Capitol Fax wrote in his weekly syndicated newspaper column http://capitolfax.com/2015/09/28/roads-to-nowhere/

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/how-gop-radicals-made-the-speakership-unappealing/407563/

Norm Ornstein Sept. 27 How GOP Radicals Made the Speakership Unappealing

It was inevitable that these two forces—radicals flexing their muscles, demanding war against Obama from their congressional foxholes, and leaders realizing that a hard line was a fool’s errand—would collide violently. The party outside Congress, including at the grass roots, has itself become more radical, and angrier at the party establishment for breaking promises and betraying its ideals. When polls consistently show that two-thirds of Republicans favor outsiders for their presidential nomination, it is not surprising that Ted Cruz would call his own Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, a liar on the Senate floor. Even insiders like Marco Rubio and Chris Christie have been eager to treat McConnell and Boehner like pinatas.

By any reasonable standard, John Boehner is a bedrock conservative—opposed to big government, pro-life, and in favor of big tax cuts. Boehner would have been placed at the right end of his party a couple of decades ago. But as a realist operating in the real world of divided government and separation of powers, he became a target within his own ranks. Now he is almost at the left end of a party that has gone from center-right to right-center to a place that is more radical than it is conservative—what Tom Mann and I called “an insurgent outlier.” On the verge of losing complete control, Boehner bailed. Boehner, with a month to go, may try to avert a shutdown and make the job of his likely successor, Young Gun Kevin McCarthy, easier. That won’t last long. In the new tribal world of radical politics, the first constitutional office has lost its luster.

Basswood Research, which has done extensive work for the Rauner campaign, surveyed 800 likely Illinois general election voters September 14-15 and found quite a bit of support for Rauner and a whole lot of opposition to House Speaker Michael Madigan. The poll, which had a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percent, found that 45.5 percent approve of Gov. Rauner’s job performance, while 40 percent disapprove and 14 percent don’t know. Not great. But a whopping 71 percent agreed with the statement: “Bruce Rauner is trying to shake things up in Springfield, but the career politicians are standing in his way,” while just 21 percent said that wasn’t true. Another 55 percent agreed that “Bruce Rauner is working to find bipartisan solutions that will help fix Illinois’s budget mess and improve the struggling state economy,” while 34.5 percent said it wasn’t true. President Obama’s favorables (50 percent) were higher than Gov. Rauner’s (47 percent) in the poll, but Obama’s unfavorables (45 percent) were higher than Rauner’s (40 percent). Only 11 percent approve of the job being done by the General Assembly, while 73 percent disapprove. House Speaker Michael Madigan’s favorable rating was only 21 percent, while his unfavorable was 60 percent. Only 19 percent had no opinion of Madigan either way, which means that Madigan is quite well known to voters. An overwhelming 76 percent agreed that “Mike Madigan controls the Democratic legislators in Springfield,” while a mere 10 percent disagreed and 14 percent weren’t sure. If you trust these poll results, then the public is largely siding with Rauner and views the General Assembly as unlikeable obstructionists tools of the House Speaker. So, a well-crafted, well-funded message which ties legislators or legislative candidates to Madigan could be disastrous.