Boehner: Dang it, I can't play golf with Obama anymore because 'everybody gets bent out of shape'

You people are really something, you know that? You send a regular guy like John Boehner to Washington - a guy who cuts his own grass and irons his own shirts - and all he wants is to be able to play golf with the president in peace. And you # about it, to the point where he's had to come to the heartbreaking conclusion that hitting the links with Obama just isn't worth the trouble anymore:

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“The President has suggested, ‘Hey, do you think it is too much trouble to play golf again?’ ” he said in excerpts of an interview on the Golf Channel airing Monday. “I have to look at him and say, ‘Yes, because everybody gets bent out of shape worried about what we are up to, when all we are really going to do is just play golf.’ ” The avid golfer dished on his 2011 round of golf with Obama, when the two defeated Vice President Joe Biden and Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), who is now running for the GOP presidential nomination. Obama invited the speaker to golf with himself and the vice president, giving Boehner the choice to pick a fourth. When he brought along Kasich, Obama decided to split up the Ohioans. “The President and I whipped up on them pretty good and they paid up,” he said.

I'm not sure why this isn't obvious to Boehner, but I'll try my best to explain it. There is nothing wrong per se with a Republican House Speaker having a good or even friendly personal relationship with a Democrat/socialist president. Back when the situation was reversed, Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill were famously rivals during business hours and friends after they closed up shop. No one had a problem with it.

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So what's the difference? The difference is this: Everyone knew that Reagan was committed to his principles and would do everything he could to see that he governed the nation in accordance with them. Democrats knew that O'Neill would fight Reagan with everything he had. So if they were friendly on a personal level, who cared? No one. They were like that Looney Tunes cartoon with the dog and the rooster. Everything changed when the time clock was punched. In the case of Obama and Boehner, you've got one guy who will stop at nothing to get everything he wants. That would be Obama. He won't do that vis-a-vis Russia, Iran or Cuba, but he'll do it every time in dealing with congressional Republicans. Then you've got another guy who is terrified of standing up to Obama because he knows Obama will resist even to the point of shutting down the government, and if it goes that far, the media will blame Republicans for whatever they can say is going wrong. So Boehner doesn't fight. He doesn't stop the Democrats from adding the "one-time emergency stimulus" of more than $800 billion to the permanent budget baseline. He doesn't force Harry Reid to pass real budgets. He doesn't use the power of the purse to defund ObamaCare or to force Obama to enforce immigration law. He doesn't even flinch at passing a law that lets Obama get around the Senate's constitutional role in approving treaties. This is why people get upset about Boehner playing golf with Obama. People expected a Republican majority in the House to serve as a real check on Obama's left-wing agenda. For four years that didn't happen because Boehner was afraid to fight. Now that Republicans have a majority in the Senate too, it makes no difference because Mitch McConnell is just as afraid. If Boehner used his position as Speaker to really fight for conservative governance, he could play golf with Obama all he wanted and no one would care. It's not about the golf, Mr. Speaker. It's about you not doing your job, which some of your own members have noticed just as much as we have.

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