![]() Throughout the book, he repeatedly asserts his distaste for the tea-party types and hard-right bomb-throwers who swept into Congress in the 2010-midterms “shellacking” of Democrats (though their success allowed him to take up the Speaker’s gavel). John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House from 2011 to 2015, laments in his new memoir, On the House, that by that point, the “crazies” in his party were more or less running the show. ![]() Nothing even close.Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag And, you know, there's always a few irregularities, but there's really been nothing of any significance that would have changed one state's election outcome, not one. I listened to all that noise before the election, after the election. So many state lawmakers now are pushing for voting restrictions based on false claims about that election. So many people supported the effort to overturn the 2020 election. There's a case to be made that the Republican Party today is abandoning the idea of democracy. I know what they're against, but I've never really seen what they're for. Sometimes I get the idea that they'd rather tear the whole system down and start over because I've never seen anything that they were for. I could go down a long list of people who are more interested in making noise than they are in doing things on behalf of the country. ![]() When you talk about noisemakers, who do you mean? Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan? But Nancy Pelosi's got the same problem on her side of the aisle. And then they've got, I don't know, these noisemakers, I'll call them. I'm a conservative Republican, but I'm not crazy. Because, you know, I'm a Republican, actually. But clearly today, I don't know as much as I thought I knew about politics. Well, listen, I've been around politics now for 40 years, and I thought I knew something about politics. I get the impression, though, that you think that a lot of leading personalities in your party don't really stand for anything, don't really believe in anything. It's All Politics Listen: 10 Best Moments From Speaker John Boehner's Exit Interview I was the speaker and I had to find a way forward as a team. There were a few who I would describe as knuckleheads who all they want to do is create chaos. Well, the fact is they got elected as Republicans, they were members of the Republican conference and most of those so-called Tea Party candidates became what I would describe as regular Republicans. You make it clear that there are a lot of people in the Tea Party movement that you consider "crazies." But at the time, you made sure there was no distance, no gap between mainstream Republicans and Tea Party types. You really can't even begin to move them until you understand where they are and why they are where they are. Because if you're listening to the person across the desk, you have a pretty good idea what it is they're looking for and you can figure out a way to get there.Īnd no different in politics, because in politics - especially in the Congress - you've got this large body of people that you're trying to move in a particular direction. The most important thing about a salesman is not his ability or her ability to talk. Well, I was in the sales and marketing business before I got into politics and learned a few things about sales. You say that the key thing was to listen to other people and figure out what was on their minds and which way the room was going. ![]() You describe the way that you ran meetings when you were speaker of the House or really in any leadership position. "So that means I had to go jump out in front of them, even if I thought what they were trying to do really made not a whole lot of sense."īook Reviews Former Speaker John Boehner's Memoir Serves As A Reflection On Life In 'Crazytown' "And even though I didn't really want to go the direction where the team's going, they were the ones who elected me to be the leader and I had an obligation to go lead them," Boehner tells NPR. Ted Cruz and other hard-line Republicans forced a government shutdown in a failed attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act. One of those times came in 2013, when Texas Sen. And I was going one direction, the team was going some other direction," Boehner says. "There were a couple of times where I found myself taking a walk. He relates the situations to one of his folksy sayings - "Boehnerisms" - that says, "A leader without followers is just a man taking a walk." As he tells Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition, often that meant going in directions he personally opposed. Boehner's memoir tells of his attempts through the years to corral his members.
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