WASHINGTON — Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner, in his first one-on-one interview since announcing his resignation last week, compared conservative hard-liners in his party to biblical “false prophets” who promise more than they can deliver.

Boehner announced Friday that he would step down Oct. 30 after nearly five years as speaker amid constant pressure from his party’s right flank. Asked Sunday by host John Dickerson on a live broadcast of CBS’s “Face the Nation” whether those hard-liners are “unrealistic about what can be done in government,” Boehner exploded.

“Absolutely, they’re unrealistic!” he said. “But, you know, the Bible says beware of false prophets, and there are people out there spreading noise about how much can get done.”

Boehner referred, as he has in the past, to the ill-fated 2013 shutdown over funding of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare: “This plan never had a chance,” he said, but he blamed outside forces for leading Republicans down an ill-advised path: “We got groups here in town, members of the House and Senate here in town, who whip people into a frenzy believing they can accomplish things that they know – they know! – are never going to happen.”

Dickerson followed up by asking whether Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the leading proponent of the 2013 shutdown, was a “false prophet.”

“Listen, you can pick a lot of names out; I’ll let you choose ’em,” Boehner said. He added: “I refer you to my remark at a fundraiser I made in August in Steamboat Springs, Colorado” – a reference to a report, published in the Daily Caller, that he had called Cruz a “jackass” behind closed doors.

The leader of one of those outside groups who have pushed for greater confrontation cheered Boehner’s departure. Michael Needham, chief executive of Heritage Action for America, said on Fox News Sunday that Boehner and his allies treated conservatives as “crazies” to be marginalized, not as central players in developing the party agenda.


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