On the House: A Washington Memoir, John Boehner Image: St. Martin's Press
"Crazy." "Moron." "Lunatic."
In his memoir
On the House, Former Speaker John Boehner dishes on his past colleagues in Congress — with most of the harshest criticism directed at fellow Republicans. This becomes less surprising as he chronicles his slow burning disillusionment over the past decade with a GOP ultimately transformed and now defined by the ethos of former President Trump.
"I don't even think I could get elected in today's Republican Party anyway, just like I don't think Ronald Reagan could either," he concludes.
No one is more surprised by this than Boehner, a former Ohio congressman from working-class roots who was first elected to Congress in 1990 as a firebrand conservative reformer. He helped expose internal corruption in the U.S. House, championed fiscal restraint, passed a lot of laws, and ultimately led a successful 20-year campaign to ban earmark spending once he became speaker. (Congress is now planning to reinstate earmark spending under Democratic control.)