House speaker Boehner resigns, can Republicans unite?
In this article the author addresses the recent announcement that House speaker John Boehner will resign in October, instead of waiting till the end of his term in January 2017, which will leave behind a diverse and some what divided republican party which currently holds the majority in the House and Senate. The author's target audience appears to be the general public, or USA Today's general readers, which according to this article, are of mixed political leanings.
The author claims that the resignation comes as no surprise since there has desires to oust Boehner since late 2010. He reasons that this is because Republican numbers in the House rose to their highest numbers since the 1920's in 2010, yet there has been no progress on priority issues, like overturning Obamacare, passing pro-life policies, or "getting tough of immigration". Boehner did not get enough votes in his last re-election as speaker from Republicans, and made up the deficit by soliciting votes from Democrats. Top conservatives feel that Republican leader ship can not offer strong enough opposition to Obama's agenda, that voters will stop voting Republican when they are seeking change.
The author's argument is that House Republicans are divided going into a presidential election year, and the future of the Republican leadership and what the party can get done on Capitol Hill is uncertain. He reasons that the party is divided into establishment figures and mavericks, and that it is questionable whether or not a nominee for Speaker will be able to unite all factions. I agree with him on this. When one takes a look the current Republican presidential nomination race, the field is quite diverse, and no candidate seems to be garnering wide spread support. In my lifetime, I have not seen a presidential candidate race with half as many candidates as the Republican party is now fielding. The republican party seems to be severely fractionated and split over key issues and leadership. This seems to apply across the board to the Republican party, which leaves me to question whether or not strong, uniting leadership will be able to be established in the House after Boehner's departure in October.
The author of this editorial is Brett M. Decker. He is a director at the White House Writers Group. He has experience as editorial page editor of the Washington Times and a writer and editor for the Wall Street Journal. He served in the G.W.Bush administration as senior vice president of communications at the Export-Import Bank of the United States. He is also an adjunct professor of government at John Hopkins University. I feel this gives him adequate experience in national politics to write well informed editorial/opinion articles about this subject matter, and most anything else pertaining to national politics and governmental affairs.
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