What’s the matter with John Boehner these days? While the rest of the country and most of his party has sounded quite gracious since their monumental electoral meltdown of last Tuesday, the Minority Leader has been shrill and angry. After Barack Obama picked Rahm Emanuel to be his Chief of Staff last week, Boehner went on the attack in a statement, calling Emanuel “an ironic choice for a president-elect who has promised to change Washington, make politics more civil, and govern from the center.”

Forget that Emanuel, while a hard-nosed pol to be sure, has a history of working for centrist policies. What better way to engender the goodwill of a new White House than to attack it as if the campaign were still going on? Earth to John, the campaign’s over, and you lost. Save the fight for after inauguration. When everyone else is trying to make peace and look ahead to a new government, you look like an angry child who trashes the kitchen because his mother won’t let him have any cookies.

But Boehner didn’t stop with the statement on Emanuel; in a Washington Post op-ed published three days after the election, Boehner calls for “vigorously fighting a far-left agenda that is out of step with the wishes of the vast majority of Americans and, more important, promoting superior Republican alternatives that prove that we offer a better vision for our country’s future.” Three days after the American people clearly decided in favor of Obama’s plans and he is already condemning it, as “far left”?

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this election amounts to complete repudiation of conservativism, but after this election it’s a Republican fairy tale to call Obama’s agenda “out of step with the wishes of the vast majority of Americans.” It’s pretty clear that Obama’s agenda, in some form, is what the majority of Americans wish for.

Everybody is tired of hearing the same old tired Republican attacks calling liberals out of touch and radically leftist; honestly, this isn’t 2004, they don’t work anymore or even make any sense. Boehner should do himself a favor, calm down, and start thinking of some good ways to broaden his party so that they might have a chance at winning elections in the future instead of reflexively attacking a new Democratic president-elect Newt Gingrich-style and thinking that will suffice to put Republicans back in power in the judgment of the American people.