Speaker of the House John Boehner announced his resignation on Sept. 25, 2015. Boehner had been working on a plan to keep the government from shutting down again, after members of his own party threatened to pull the shut down card unless Planned Parenthood, a women’s reproductive health organization that provides birth control and abortions, was defunded by the government.
The move allowed Boehner and other senior Republicans to vote with the Democrats on a budget to keep the government open until next year without fear of losing his job. Boehner, while considered conservative and deeply religious, was in favour of compromising for the good of the people, which an increasingly radical faction of his party views as “weakness.”
The budget would also support the Iran nuclear deal, which notoriously caused a group of Republicans to write an open letter to Iran stating that the deal would be ripped up should they win the 2016 election.
Boehner’s resignation came on the heels of the Pope’s first ever visit to Congress, an event that the Catholic Boehner had been trying to organize for years. At the Pope’s speech, Boehner became visibly emotional, and had private words with the pontiff after his talk.
The Republican party is in uncharacteristic disarray heading into a presidential election year. The alliance between wealthy corporate interests, the religious right-wing, and the anti-government Tea Party is starting to crumble after decades of success. The party has a number of hardliners who refuse to negotiate with President Obama and the Democrats under any circumstances—a role that the relatively moderate Boehner was uncomfortable with.
Senator Marco Rubio was met with cheers at a Value Voters Summit when he announced that Boehner had resigned, and Senator Ted Cruz, the man who spearheaded the last government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act, said that compromising with Obama “is not the behaviour that one would expect of a Republican speaker of the House”. President Obama praised Boehner’s work as speaker, calling him “selfless” and “a patriot” for sacrificing his career. Many other Democrats echoed these sentiments, as well as fears that Boehner’s successor will be much more difficult to work with.
The top three polling Republican presidential candidates, Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson, are very popular amongst the Tea Party movement. None have held elected office, all oppose government spending, and all have been met with both praise and criticism for racist remarks, anti-scientific views, and wildly inaccurate statements.