By DEXTER DUGGAN
When John Boehner inexplicably tore into Sen. Ted Cruz as “Lucifer in the flesh,” and something else nasty, during an appearance at California’s Stanford University on April 27, the former U.S. House speaker made himself the second major embarrassment to a different institution of higher education way back in the Midwest, Notre Dame in Indiana.
The foul-mouthed Boehner already had been announced as one of two prominent Catholics scheduled to receive the South Bend school’s Laetare Medal, which that school itself described as “the oldest and most prestigious honor accorded to American Catholics,” in mid-May.
The medal was to be presented at the school’s commencement ceremony on May 15 to recognize the two recipients’ “civility” and rejection of “a toxic political environment” with “poisonous invective.”
The other honoree for exceptional Catholic fidelity is Vice President Joe Biden, a scandalously bad Catholic and facilitator of Barack Obama’s Culture of Death.
If Biden’s shameful reputation wasn’t burden enough on Notre Dame, now the school had poison-tongued Boehner making himself a spectacle, too.
Notre Dame President Fr. John Jenkins, CSC, in announcing the two honorees on March 5, had said, “It is a good time to remind ourselves what lives dedicated to genuine public service in politics look like. We find it in the lives of Vice President Biden and Speaker Boehner.”
Jenkins already had caused himself major embarrassment by having Obama at Notre Dame back in 2009 to be saluted, although Obama’s grim pro-abortion extremism — even in favor of denying medical care to babies who survived abortion — was a matter of record. Jenkins’ grave misstep then excited a furore of opposition among Catholics.
Not only did Boehner at Stanford rip Cruz as “Lucifer in the flesh” — quite an achievement for an angelic being gone bad who is pure spirit — but also as the most “miserable son of a bitch” he ever worked with.
Boehner worked willingly with radical Culture of Death Democrats like San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi and Obama, but they didn’t receive the stinging invective from Boehner that Republican pro-lifer Cruz did.
The Stanford Daily school newspaper reported that “Boehner reflected positively on his relationship with Obama. Although he acknowledged that the two disagree, Boehner said the two get along well.”
Intriguingly, Boehner also said he was friends with Donald Trump, the billionaire butting heads with Cruz in the GOP presidential primaries. Boehner said he’d played golf with Trump for years, was “texting buddies” with him, and would vote for Trump in the general election if he became the GOP presidential nominee. However, he wouldn’t vote for Cruz.
Given that any presidential candidate has faults, it seemed incomprehensible that Boehner found Trump to be the more acceptable of the two White House hopefuls, considering the billionaire’s tirades and impertinence.
Could Notre Dame officialdom continue to be comfortable with honoring Boehner despite his chumminess with a man denounced as a racist woman-hater by trendy political-correctness police?
Moreover, Boehner represented the stodgy GOP establishment that Trump claimed to be determined to blow up and burn down. If Boehner was willing to let Trump insert the blade, couldn’t he at least fume less over Cruz?
The Wanderer sent the Notre Dame communications department two emails on May 2, and left a message with a live person at the school vice president’s office on May 3, asking if Boehner still would be honored with the medal. This newspaper received no answer.
The worker in the vice president’s office said she would pass along this newspaper’s inquiry to a spokesman, but she couldn’t say if he would respond.
A Sniper
In a May 2 telephone interview with The Wanderer, former California GOP Cong. Robert Dornan, an outspoken conservative, said that if the issue were only Boehner, perhaps Notre Dame would withdraw its plan to honor him.
However, Dornan said, the situation is more complicated because Republican Boehner’s award serves to balance out Notre Dame’s giving the medal to the Culture of Death’s Democrat Biden, too.
If Notre Dame’s Jenkins “dumped Boehner, which absolutely he should, then Biden stands alone,” Dornan said. “…I think we’re stuck with this scandal.”
Boehner’s biting criticism of Cruz “is one of the most insidious personal attacks I have beheld in a long, long political career,” Dornan said. He added that Fox News’ pundit Bill O’Reilly called Boehner “a sniper.” O’Reilly “meant that in the worst sense of the use of that word,” Dornan said — someone who kills victims from a hidden position until he’s shot out of the tree himself.
The script from O’Reilly’s April 29 “Talking Points Memo” shows the pundit saying:
“The problem here is this: Boehner is a sniper. We invited the speaker on the program. He turned us down, as he always does. If you are going to smear someone, at least submit yourself to questioning in order to provide some perspective. ‘Talking Points’ does not respect backstabbing. You have a beef, state it, back it up.”
Supposedly honoring Boehner for rejecting “a toxic political environment,” Notre Dame seems ready to go ahead with immersing its students in that very sort of environment at commencement.
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