RedState’s Erick Erickson on Thursday offered an interesting take as to why House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was publicly fuming at conservative groups on Capitol Hill.
“John Boehner is trying to get the ‘us vs. them’ battle lines drawn before primary season,” wrote Erickson. “He needs those lines drawn because he is about to move on to the immigration fight. To get to that fight, he has to take on the conservative movement in a number of primaries around the country.”
“His temper tantrum today had very little to do with the present fight, but the next fight,” he added. “Boehner needs to draw fence sitters to him, make conservative groups unpopular, and then dare the fence sitters to go sit with the unpopular crowd during the immigration fight.”
As evidence Erickson cited Boehner’s pick up of a top-tier immigration policy aide from the Bipartisan Policy Center earlier this month.
For their part, conservative groups like FreedomWorks have struck back, questioning Boehner’s credibility by agreeing to a newly reached bipartisan budget deal that raises sequester-level spending.
