and the humiliation that s come with that here in front of the whole nation. tonight we begin with how we got here, because everyone s been absorbing the days of chaos, headlines about the failure of the republican majority to get its work start in the its new congress. a story that really goes beyond politics and it s reaching people who don t always follow the swearing in or the speaker s race. if you approach this with fresh eyes as many americans have, saying what s going on over there? you may wonder why the big chaotic fight continues with rolling losses for republicans. why is it happening at the finish line of a win for the gop in the midterms? and why is the big fight in washington within one party, not between one of the typically warring factions between parties? there are many factors but three reasons loom large. first a crop of republicans who are more focused on hijacking than running. second, this trump internet industrial complex that puts the content, the tr
display, because fox elite have been blasting the gop defectors. the tea party an anti-obama wave that morphed into an anti-boehner, anti-leadership wave. that tea party group, which was the baseline for what we re seeing expose this week, they made boehner s life hell and had more demands that were about the show than any reality or any governoring and definitely any vote counting. boehner was conservative, anti-obama, but he would publicly complain he was forced to negotiate in fantasy land as he hit those republican detractors. frankly i just think that they ve lost all credibility. they had no cred with him, but their content was rile up part of the base, and their chaos was thrilling to some. it through sand in the government until it could fail.
against mccarthy tonight. again, a smaller number than the margin boehner had. but mccarthy looks weaker because the gop is so much weaker now. they blew their touted red wave with a historically terrible showing in nochl we remember watching kornacki at the board. there wasn t any wave, a fizzle of extreme candidates and political malpractice. they usually buck trends that fave the opposition party. that fizzle is the reason why mccarthy is going through his living hell of groundhog day this week. at times that historical context may have gotten lost. boehner would have been stopped with exactly this kind of thin margin. so if you re looking at this and saying, mccarthy is so much worse at doing this than boehner that s a math thing, not a leadership thing. now, boehner s opponents ultimately did oust him, and his successors, if you remember, fared even worse. there was a member of his leadership team, eric kanter who
defectors, and that bring us to the third and final point in my introduction for you tonight, which is the math, and november s fizzle of any red wave which could have saved mccarthy on paper, in the numbers. because we can count. consider when boehner first won the speakership, he had 12 republicans voting against him. that number actually doubled to 24 republicans voting against boehner when he was re-elected for that speakership. so that is a critical comparison. boehner could win with these 24 defectors because the republican margin was large then. for all the attacks on mccarthy, and he s shown weakness and problems and lack of strategy or plan b ten failed votes in. if mccarthy stumbled into this majority with one as large as boehner s, well, he d have the math to be speaker right now. he started the week counted up with 19 not. that s grown up to about 21 nos
and that tea party falsely claimed they could end obamacare just by shutting down the government. that was a lie. re-opening even a shuttered government does not cancel or wipe out existing federal health care laws. and just about everybody knew that. and boehner said those hijackers knew it and later admitted it. they pushed us into the fight to defund obamacare and to shut down the government. most of you know, my members know, that wasn t exactly the strategy i had in mind. but if you ll recall, the day before the government re-opened, one of the people, one of these groups stood up and said, well, we never really thought it would work. are you kidding me! never thought it would work, because it couldn t work, because it wasn t how it works. you say boehner there really letting it ride and letting it go and saying, hey, are you kidding me? boehner was talking that way when he had the margin to win the speakership without those