There are some fascinating mutterings out of Capitol Hill over the last few hours. As we’ve noted, the prospects for Speaker Boehner’s debt bill look substantially better this morning than they did last night. And John Stanton has a new piece just out from Roll Call on the dressing-down Republican Study Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R) got in a caucus meeting this morning for allegedly (but hardly surprisingly) rallying outside groups to help kill the Boehner bill.
The controversy now seems to center on whether a junior aide should be disciplined or fired over an email getting outside groups to help kill the plan. But that’s just the proxy question. And the line between spin and reality here is as fluid as an Escher drawing in these cases — difficult to distinguish from one another and changing from one to the other quickly. But the real story here is that Boehner is at least making a good show of and seems – as far as we can tell — to be succeeding in some measure in turning the tide against the crowd of outside pressure groups and professional hollerers — Club for Growth, Heritage Action, FreedomWorks, Erick Erickson and all the rest — trying to bring him down.
I think we’ll know a lot more by the end of the day what’s smoke here and what’s not.
