On Sunday’s This Week, ABC’s Matthew Dowd used Speaker of the House John Boehner’s resignation as the perfect opportunity to attack Republican voters who were unhappy with his tenure.
The so-called conservative proclaimed that Republicans are “really upset” that “America has changed...America is now less white, less married, less churched, less conservative, and that is a difficult prospect for them to face in the course of this.”
For his part, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol pushed back against Dowd’s smear of conservatives and pointed out that “62% of Republicans disapprove of the congressional leadership’s performance. That's not a bunch of conservatives who yearn for an older America-- that's a lot of Republicans who would like stronger leadership on the Hill.”
Dowd continued to attack conservatives in Congress who opposed Boehner as just wanting to “block Obama at every turn” but Washington Post reporter Robert Costa concluded the back-and-forth by explaining that what Republicans merely wanted was someone to show “more aggression, and that's what you see in Congress, you see it in the presidential race. There's this appetite for outsiders who have more aggression than the Republican establishment.”
See relevant transcript below.
ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos
September 27, 2015
MARTHA RADDATZ: And Matt Dowd, I want to turn to 2016 with you, unless you're dying to say something about John Boehner.
MATTHEW DOWD: I actually want to follow up to that which is that the idea of holding the speakership a majority thing is now so temporary, it reminds me of a relationship in the Kardashian household lasts longer than a majority position in the House.
RADDATZ: You were just dying to use that line.
DOWD: I actually think this is more reflective than what the conservatives think about the speaker and the leadership and what they think of President Obama and the fact that there upset that America has changed. That’s what there really upset about. America is now less white, less married, less churched, less conservative, and that is a difficult prospect for them to face in the course of this.
BILL KRISTOL: Wait a second, 62% of Republicans disapprove of the congressional leadership’s performance. That's not a bunch of conservatives who yearn for an older America-- that's a lot of Republicans who would like stronger leadership on the Hill.
DOWD: What is it that they wanted the Republican leadership to do other than what they did which was block Obama at every turn?
ROBERT COSTA: They wanted more aggression, and that's what you see in Congress, you see it in the presidential race. There's this appetite for outsiders who have more aggression than the Republican establishment.
