John Boehner says a tendency toward being “political terrorists” is stronger in his own Republican Party than among Democrats, and named Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and fellow Ohioan Representative Jim Jordan as among the offenders.
The former House speaker, who left Congress in 2015, was interviewed on CBS’s “Sunday Morning” as part of media tour for his new memoir.
Boehner spoke of the rise of hyperpartisan lawmakers who reject any compromise as weakness or selling out, and how it undermined his ability to make deals with the Obama administration when he was speaker of the House.
“Some of these members, I’m not quite sure what they’re for. They’re against everything,” he said, adding that “when you’re in the majority party, you’ve got a responsibility to govern, not just make noise.”
Referring to Jordan, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, he said, “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart — never building anything, never putting anything together,” he said.
Cruz, Boehner said, was the “perfect symbol, you know, of — getting elected, make a lot of noise, draw a lot of attention to yourself, raise a lot of money, which means you’re gonna go make more noise, raise more money.”
Boehner’s “On the House: A Washington Memoir” has already made waves ahead of its Tuesday publication date. Axios reported in February that while recording audio for the book, Boehner, 71, aimed an expletive at Cruz and veered from the published version at other points.
