A Salute to the Heroic House 25

The legislative process is often described as sausage-making: It’s preferable not to see what it entails.

Yesterday’s dramatic effort to prevent the reelection of John Boehner as the Speaker of the House of Representatives wasn’t pretty. Twenty-five courageous legislators put everything on the line in a desperate, last-minute and necessarily disorganized bid to remove a leader who, most recently, in last year’s lame-duck session abandoned his promises, his party’s core constituency and his sworn duty to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Despite it all, these heroic 25 would have prevailed had six new legislators who promised their constituents they would vote against Boehner as speaker been true to their word. They have bought the favor of the discredited sausage-maker at the expense of their honor, and the future of the Republic.