As John Boehner's Tears Go By

For me, the most embarrassing, fingernails scraping blackboard moment of yesterday’s campaign coverage was to watch Speaker-to-be John Boehner burst into tears talking about “chasing the American Dream” and mopping floors to put himself through college on his path to the House Speakership. It’s right up there with Nixon’s weepy farewell, “always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”

I take it Nixon was referencing his “enemies list” when he said the haters won’t win “unless you hate them.” Nice to know it was nothing personal. Like Nixon before him, John Boehner is a career politician first elected to the House exactly 20 years ago this month.

So when Boehner addressed a Through The Looking Glass gathering of Tea Partiers to say he was a Washington “outsider” and “there will be no compromise,” he must have forgotten about his country club Republican corporate connections and all those years spent as a corporate shill, highlighted by passing out tobacco lobby checks on the House floor. He also must have forgotten the voters’ perennial plea that the parties work together to solve the nation’s problems.

Rachel Maddow cut right to the quick of Boehner’s moist tear ducts, when she noted in her inimitable way that this guy cries at the drop of a hat. He cries at ribbon-cutting and award ceremonies, and he wept copiously urging fellow Republicans to vote for George Bush’s TARP program in 2008 — which became an anti-Obama distortion used by Republicans and groups like the Chamber of Commerce (that supported TARP) against Democrats in the 2010 campaign. Why is it that the crowd reflexively chants “USA, USA, USA” when Republicans of the male gender cry? (Weird...)

The big unspoken question at today’s presidential presser was how President Obama will react to the potential avalanche of frivolous investigations stemming from Rep. Darrell Issa and spurred on by Michelle Bachmann and her caucus of Tea Party nutjobs, now that they have subpoena power. The birthers and tenthers are just itching to open a probe into the President’s citizenship in an official attempt to deligitimize his presidency just in time for the 2012 elections. Perhaps then we’ll be treated to yet another bizarre display from Speaker Boehner channeling Nero and the burning of Rome … as tears go by.