http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/eric-cantor-the-gop-after-john-boehner.html?_r=0By ERIC CANTOR SEPT. 25, 2015
Richmond, Va. — LIKE so many others, I was stunned by Speaker John A. Boehner’s announcement on Friday that he would step down at the end of October. For nearly six years — first as Republican whip and then as majority leader — I met with John on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis as we worked to lead the House Republican Conference. It is no secret that we had different styles and personalities, but he was always selfless, a man who put the nation, his constituents, the House of Representatives and the party before himself.
Friday was another selfless act. By stepping down amid the tumult in the House conference, he has given my former colleagues in the House, fellow members of the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement a chance to demonstrate to the American people that we are prepared to govern and worthy of their trust.
After nearly seven years of President Obama, conservatives are understandably angry about the direction this country is going. We are anxious for a course correction.
During President Obama’s first two years in office, his party controlled the House and for a time had a supermajority in the Senate. Almost entirely on their own they enacted a nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank financial regulations. Not for the first or last time, alternative suggestions from Republicans were dismissed out of hand.
Following that, the American people elected Republicans to the majority in the House. And Mr. Obama’s liberal platform ground to a halt. Spending actually went down. Republicans, led by Speaker Boehner, provided the check and balance voters had demanded.
But somewhere along the road, a number of voices on the right began demanding that the Republican Congress not only block Mr. Obama’s agenda but enact a reversal of his policies. They took to the airwaves and the Internet and pronounced that congressional Republicans could undo the president’s agenda — with him still in office, mind you — and enact into law a conservative vision for government, without compromise.
Strangely, according to these voices, the only reason that was not occurring had nothing to do with the fact that the president was unlikely to repeal his own laws, or that under the Constitution, absent the assent of the president or two-thirds of both houses of Congress, you cannot make law. The problem was a lack of will on the part of congressional Republican leaders.
Now we see that these same voices have turned to the threat of a government shutdown or a default on the debt as the means by which we can force President Obama to agree to their demands. I wonder what they would have said, if during the last two years of President Bush’s term, the Democratic congressional majority had tried something similar.
The tragedy here is that these voices have not been honest with our fellow conservatives. They have not been honest about what can be accomplished when your party controls Congress, but not the White House. As a result we missed chances to achieve important policies for the good of the country.
The response I often hear to these points is: “Well, Republicans at least need to fight.” On this I agree. It is imperative that we fight for what we believe in. But we should fight smartly. I have never heard of a football team that won by throwing only Hail Mary passes, yet that is what is being demanded of Republican leaders today. Victory on the field is more often a result of three yards and a cloud of dust. In politics this means incremental progress, winning hearts and minds before winning the vote — the kind of governance Ronald Reagan perfected.
During discussions over the debt limit in 2011, John Boehner and I negotiated one of the largest reductions in discretionary spending in history. Earlier this year, John was able to use the need to update Medicare physician payments to enact permanent entitlement reforms. No one ever claimed the deals were perfect, but as on so many other occasions, they advanced the conservative agenda.
We are in the midst of a campaign to elect the next president. After two terms of President Obama, an economy that is growing too slowly and a retrenchment of American power abroad, the conservative to-do list for the next Republican president is quite long. That president’s success will require steady, capable hands in Congress to move a conservative vision forward. Now is not the time for more infighting. Now is the time to come together and lay out a positive, honest governing platform to take the country forward.
This is what my friend John Boehner fought for, and this is what we must continue to fight for to honor his dedication to Congress and the American people.
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Eric Cantor is a former Republican House majority leader and vice chairman and managing director at Moelis & Company.
