as those, even on the logistics, john boehner s leadership in the house has just been a mess from the very beginning. everybody wants to blame those radical tea partyers in his caucus. you can t blame the radical tea partyers for forgetting to swear in two guys. i m sure john boehner s a very nice man. john boehner is manifestly bad at the job of being speaker of the house. that came full circle for him today. one of the guys who john boehner forgot to swear in, congressman mike fitzpatrick, finally is now a dually sworn member of congress. congressman mike fitzpatrick was presiding over the house chamber when the number two democrat in the house steny hoyer tried to bring the senate payroll tax cut bill to the floor. and john boehner s foley, otherwise known as mike fitzpatrick, mike fitzpatrick apparently had no plan to deal with the democrats trying to do this. he did not arrange for republicans to argue against it or to make some procedural move to try to make it look like it was b
in two guys. i m sure john boehner s a very nice man. john boehner is manifestly bad at the job of being speaker of the house. that came full circle for him today. one of the guys who john boehner forgot to swear in, congressman mike fitzpatrick, finally is now a dually sworn member of congress. congressman mike fitzpatrick was presiding over the house chamber when the number two democrat in the house steny hoyer tried to bring the senate payroll tax cut bill to the floor. and john boehner s foley, otherwise known as mike fitzpatrick, mike fitzpatrick apparently had no plan to deal with the democrats trying to do this. he did not arrange for republicans to argue against it or to make some procedural move to try to make it look like it was being worked on or something. he didn t do any of the legislative things that help a side win in washington when they re engaged in a big fight. the way that he dealt with it when the democrats tried to bring up this bill today is the guy who was the
votes and effectively control of the general assembly there. what does that say to you with regard to the 2012 presidential election because we know that president obama won virginia, first time in a long time it went democrat. since 1964, yep. i think it s a harbinger, the fact is he s going to be hard pressed to win virginia. bob mcdonald is the most popular republican governor in the country today. this will only be the second time since reconstruction that republicans have controlled the house, the senate and the executive branch in virginia. let s back up to what we were talking about a moment ago, ed, that s what s happened out in the state of ohio regarding the unions, collective bargaining thing. that s a defeat for the republicans. they did get a win regarding the health care initiative. right, so they had one in the plus column and one in the negative column. what does this mean for ohio? that it s split. ohio is a battleground state. you had it yesterday. you had a
against the republican majority right here in queens, we ve got for the first time in 90 years a republican withining that districpp district. you have the jews concerning about the israeli issue and also support for gay rights. but you also have the scandal, the overhang there what weiner did. is there a national story here or is it all local? with every special election, you you get the very predictable spin there both sides. if the other side win, it means it s just a local matter. and they re both spinning it into self parity. the fact is that this congressional district is as unique as any other, but it s very difficult to imagine this having gone democratic having gone republican in any other year. and i think the economy is still a beg issue. the economy, the economy, the economy.
how do you think that concern balances against the desire to intervene in this case in libya? i think they re what bob gates has been trying to say at various places in this debate i think is we need to be careful about the size of our footprint in what we choose to do. i think gadhafi s a monster. i want the opposition to get rid of him. but at the same time if we help an opposition win where fundamentally we ve embedded ourselves so deeply in helping a side win a civil war and our ships and fighters and planes and bombs have helped turn this around and we re embedded, we don t have a very good legacy of showing, one, that we can get out. and two, we undermine i think the legitimacy of part of those forces that won. that immediately you get another side that begins to challenge the legitimacy of one faction of the opposition as having sold out to the west. the narrative of western intervention and humiliation of that area of the world by western powers is a very, very strong narra