relationship with the Tea Party wing of the GOP has always been an uneasy one. He kept Tea Party activists at arm's length until November 2009, when thousands of them congregated at the Capitol for a rally planned by a handful of House conservative gadflies.

Rather than get trampled by the parade, Boehner led House Republicans down the steps of the Capitol, waved a copy of the Constitution, and all but declared his allegiance to the Tea Party. At the time, the establishment and Tea Party wings of the GOP were united in their opposition to Obamacare, which was still making its way through Congress.

But rifts would emerge soon after Republicans won control of the House, and Boehner won the speaker's gavel, in the following year's midterm election. Itwas apparent at the time that he would have difficulty balancing the establishment's desire to govern with the Tea Party's impulse to tear down institutions.

In the summer of 2011, Washington was abuzz with talk of a $4 trillion "grand bargain" between Boehner and President Barack Obama. But the negotiations fell apart when conservatives in Boehner's own caucus whipped him back into line. Since then, he has struggled time and again to fulfill the basic obligations of government — funding federal programs and making good on debt — in the face of a rebellious phalanx of his caucus that telegraphs little pretense of thinking those are important goals.

That dynamic was never more evident than in the fall of 2013, when the government shut down over conservatives' insistence that a