THE VISION THING. Too many people too soon forgot about John Boehner's laugh-out-loud hilarious campaign manifesto released back during his House leadership race, in which the Ohio rep. included epigraphs from Winston Churchill and Walt Disney and implored his fellow Republicans to reclaim their souls through a renewed commitment to spewing vacuous platitudes. For a liberal, one of the funniest things in the memo (PDF) was Boehner's enthusiastic call for a big caucus-wide powwow to figure out what Republicans stand for and what their core principles are. Given the number of endless (and endlessly futile) "what do we stand for?" conference meetings and bull sessions that Democrats have masochistically forced themselves to endure since the 2004 election, one read Boehner's cheerful game plan and wanted to shout "No! Stop! You have no idea what you're getting into!" I had assumed that once Boehner actually took the helm in the House he'd soon forget about his silly mission-statement ideas, but to my great delight this Hill story mentions in passing that, apparently, Boehner's moving full speed ahead.
--Sam Rosenfeld
