Boehner retrenches while his extremists express glee over blowing the place up

The "real issue" is our members don't want to be perceived as raising taxes. - Speaker Boehner just now. @nowwithalex
' @AriMelber via web

That's the obvious conclusion to last night's debacle in the House of Represenatives, in which a rebellion prevented a vote on House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" to avert the fiscal cliff curb. In a bellicose press conference this morning, Boehner baldly stated that his caucus won't vote for a tax increase, and that what this country has is a spending problem. In other words, he's pretending that his massive failure yesterday, and the fact that his caucus is in total chaos, isn't happening.

Asked if he was worried about his speakership, he said simply, "No, I'm not. If you do the right things everyday for the right reasons, the right things will happen. ...  While we may not have been able to get the votes last night to avert 99.81 percent of the tax increases, I don't think'they weren't taking that out on me. They were dealing with the perception that somebody might accuse them of raising taxes."

His confidence must be entirely bluster, because he's got a real problem on his hands. Like the gloating from this guy, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), who was one of the teabagger committee chairs who was "purged" by House leadership and lost his chair. He called Boehner's failure "a victory for Republian principles." Then twisted the knife a little bit more:

"On a separate note, Republican leadership thought they could silence conservatives when they kicked us off our Committees. I'm glad that enough of my colleagues refused to back down after the threats and intimidation, thus preventing the Conference from abandoning our principles."

On the other side (there actually is another side in the Republican caucus, unbelievably), one Republican is embarrassed by the clown show. Here's Rep. Steven C. LaTourette (R-OH):

'It weakens the entire Republican Party, the Republican majority. It's the continuing dumbing-down of the Republican Party and we are going to be seen more and more as a bunch of extremists that can't even get a majority of our own people to support policies that we're putting forward,' LaTourette said.

Here's the one thing Boehner said this morning that rang true. There will be some resolution to this, but "How we get there, God only knows."