Conservatives of late have been openly bemoaning the performance of Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and now are cheering the news of his resignation. However, I remember watching the live election coverage with a friend back in 2010 when Boehner and the republicans won control of the U.S. House. It was called a “Tea Party victory” and conservatives were all aflutter, believing, “we’ve won, we’ve taken our country back!” Tiny-Tears Boehner was crying real, live tears for the camera as conservatives joined in, also, with tearful joy: “we’re saved!”
I had already been fooled by George “new-world-order” Bush back in 1988, and Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution in 1994; then watched as the conservative right bought into GW “record-deficit-Bush” as being a true conservative in 2000. By the time Boehner came along, I just felt like I’d seen this movie too many times not to be able to predict the ending. There’s a saying about, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Nevertheless, the conservative right seems to be once again getting aroused with hope, this time, with the hope that something good will come of Boehner’s resignation and subsequent replacement as Speaker of the House – replacement with a “conservative?” Meanwhile, the current presidential circus, and infatuation with Donald Trump, would seem to prove that we like being fooled and are ready to buy a ticket for another elephant ride.
I don’t mean this as discouraging negativism in the vein of “nothing will ever get any better, there’s no hope; let’s all sing another chorus of, ‘Gloom, despair and agony on me.’ “What I do mean is that nothing is going to get any better until we start paying attention, determine not to get fooled again, and realize that to change our government we have to change our vote, not just accept the next person in line with an “R” after their name.
