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February 10, 2011

Kudos to Speaker Boehner

By crewstaff

Congress, Corruption, Ethics, Republicans, Senate, States, New York, Ohio, House Members, John Boehner, Senate Members

John Boehner 150 minutes. That's all it took for an unknown congressman to become a well-known former congressman. The saga of Rep. Christopher Lee (R-NY) took less time to play out than the movie Titanic (which lasted 194 minutes) - but it had the same ending.

Speaker John Boehner deserves a great deal of credit for seeing the iceberg on the horizon and pushing Rep. Lee out. (Although, the speaker claims he didn't chat with Lee, does anyone really believe that Lee chose to leave so quickly without a push?).

Speaker Boehner serves as a ruthless judge and jury within his party when it comes to the extracurricular activities of members of his conference. Before the latest resignation, then-Minority Leader Boehner pushed Reps. Vito Fossella (R-NY) and Mark Souder (R-IN) out following revelations of their contemptible conduct. It may not be too long before Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) receives the same treatment.

So what would happen (hypothetically, of course) if a member of the House Republican Caucus was revealed to have an affinity for prostitutes and retained a staff member with drug and alcohol problems who was convicted of charges related to beating his girlfriend? Or if another (hypothetical) member was sleeping with a campaign staffer married to his chief of staff (and best friend), fired the pair when the affair ended, had his parents pay them off (without reporting it to the FEC), and helped the cuckolded husband illegally set up a lobbying business to lobby the member's own office? Considering his admirably low threshold for misconduct, it probably wouldn't take Speaker Boehner 150 minutes to dispense with these members.

One thing is for certain: Senator John Ensign (R-NV) and Senator David Vitter (R-LA) must be thankful that their own leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), has a much higher tolerance for reprehensible conduct. Sen. McConnell could take a lesson from the new speaker. He should consider the saga of Chris Lee as a teachable moment and move to jettison the two anchors within his own conference.

We won't hold our breath.