Oh the desperation as the GOP splinters and the in-fighting begins that further divides the party. WASHINGTON (AP) - After years of bitter friction within Republican circles, House Speaker John Boehner is lashing out against hard-line conservative and tea party groups - the latest GOP establishment figure to join the increasingly public battle roiling the party. For the second day in a row - but at greater length and with more passion - the Ohio Republican on Thursday lit into groups such as Heritage Action and Club for Growth. Though naming no names, he accused such groups and others of stirring up opposition on the right to a budget bill worked out with Democrats that would replace some across-the-board spending cuts now in place with longer-term savings. "When groups come out and criticize an agreement that they've never seen, you begin to wonder just how credible those actions are," he told reporters. That was just hours before the House was to vote on the bill, which also would raise government fees on airline tickets as well as pension insurance premiums on employers. "Frankly, I just think they've lost all credibility," he said of the foes. Heritage Action was a key force behind the "defund Obamacare" effort that swept the right earlier this year and steamrolled stumbling House GOP leaders into October's government shutdown fiasco. "They're pushing our members into places where they don't want to be," Boehner complained Thursday. Heritage Action, the advocacy wing of the Heritage Foundation, has lobbied aggressively against virtually every bipartisan piece of legislation that Boehner has advanced, including the small-scale budget pact that Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., negotiated with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash. Last fall, Heritage Action, along with Sens Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, pressed House Republicans to oppose a short-term spending bill that would fund implementation of the much-criticized health care law, even though GOP leaders thought it was a flawed, politically stupid strategy. "They pushed us into the fight to defund Obamacare and shut down the government," Boehner said. "That wasn't exactly the strategy I had in mind. But if you recall, the day before the government reopened, one of these groups stood up and said, 'Well, we never really thought it would work.' Are you kidding me?" Boehner was apparently alluding to an interview by Michael Needham, who runs Heritage Action, on Fox News in October. "Well everybody understands that we're not going to be able to repeal this law until 2017 and that we have to win the Senate and we have to win the White House," Needham said on "America's Newsroom." http://apnews.myway.com//article/20131212/DAAL3OM00.html
John Boehner says they've lost all credibility? So you're taking what Boehner says as Gospel now? This look more like selective picking to me.
