Dump Boehner Today

[FiremanBob]

Take advantage of this great opportunity to change the direction of the GOP away from the "Dem-lite" establishment. Call, email and write to your congresscritter today to ask him to vote to depose John Boehner as Speaker of the House. Louie Gohmert would make a great Speaker.

We don't often get a chance to participate in such decision-making. Let's not lose this one.

[ShotgunBlast]

While I agree with the sentiment, I don't see how Boehner loses this. Even if there are enough conservative reps to not vote for Boehner and force another round of voting, I don't see how Louie Gohmert gets to the necessary 218 votes. Pelosi is going to tell the Dems to vote for her during the first round. She'll never have enough votes to win so at least that's comforting. If the Republican vote is split and creates a second round of voting, Pelosi may well tell the Dems to vote for Boehner since working with him is the lesser of two evils. Of course I can only imagine what concessions she is going to ask for once he gets the win. Establishment Republicans are going to vote for Boehner regardless, giving him the win.

This reminds me of the 50 or so votes to repeal Obamacare. Symbolic in nature, but doesn't actually go anywhere and just wastes time and money.

[ShotgunBlast]

And Boehner won on the first try with only 25 Republicans voting against him. Think you can still reform the party from within?

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[SpanishInquisition]

Looks like Goodlatte sold me out.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[mamabearCali]

Ichabod......the glory is departing.

Heaven help us. Our leaders are hungry wolves that sek only to devour us.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[FiremanBob]

You know, the pseudo-sophisticated cynical critic who does nothing never makes anything happen. There are too many people who use that attitude as a cover for their own unwillingness to make an effort. It was worth the effort. The "I knew it wouldn't work, so I'm glad I didn't even try" approach is anything but admirable.

Why is it that when the Leftists lose a battle they pick themselves up and fight harder and smarter the next time, while so-called conservatives and libertarians take it as a ratification of their own depressive sloth?

The apathetic losers who criticized the Whig party all the way down to its dissolution were not the people who created the Republican party. Negativity never gets anything done. But if it makes you seem "cool" to be a pseudo-sophisticated, apathetic pessimist, hey, it's a free country.

[mamabearCali]

Fireman we are just mourning a bit.

We fight on, we must fight on or we lay down and let our children live on a police state intent on empoverishing them.

But give us our afternoon of cursing the darkness as we fumble for a lightswitch.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[dorminWS]

Griffith Statement on Speaker of the 114th Congress

Monday, January 5, 2015 – Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) today issued the following statement on the Speaker of the House for the 114th Congress:

“I strongly believe that Congress ought to be more aggressive in opposing President Obama’s policies than in the past. Time will tell if the new Congress will bring a more aggressive approach in fighting President Obama’s failed policies.”

“That being said, no candidate other than John Boehner stepped forward for the nomination at the Republican Conference meeting of November 13, 2014. Had a viable candidate sought the nomination at that meeting, I would have given serious consideration to supporting them due to my frustrations with the leadership style of John Boehner.”

“Further, no member nominated anyone else to serve as Speaker at that Republican Conference meeting. That meeting and its purpose was fully known well in advance, and it was attended by the vast majority of the members of the 114th Congress.”

“Recently, one on Friday and one on Sunday, other Republican members stated they would place their names for consideration as Speaker of the House. That would be less than 5 days of planning and consideration for one candidate, and less than 3 for the other before the 114th Congress starts tomorrow.”

“As of 5:00pm on January 5, neither candidate opposing Boehner has requested my vote, indicating they have no plan to campaign, win, or lead. To underscore the point, neither candidate has sent me a plan for leading this nation, nor have they sent me a plan for leading this body, their leadership team, or their leadership style.”

“In order to be a leader of the U.S. House of Representatives or, for that matter, any legislative body, one must have a plan for leadership. While I do not completely agree with John Boehner’s leadership style or plan, at least he has one.”

“The curtain on the 114th Congress goes up less than 24 hours from now, on January 6 at noon. In order to effectively govern the United States, you must be ready at noon on January 6. The Speaker is the third highest elected public official in America. The Republican challengers to Boehner, while good and honorable men, just aren’t ready. Who will be on their staff? Do the challengers want to have emergency meetings of the steering committee this week to determine members’ committee assignments for the 114th Congress, thus delaying action? The steering committee is a committee of the leadership team nominated and elected at the November 13 Republican Conference meeting, regional representatives elected at the November 13 meeting, and others. The Speaker nominee is granted the most votes on the steering committee, and leads the process. Do the challengers wish to re-open this process after the session begins?”

“I strongly believe the legislative process must be improved so as to reflect the voters’ will as expressed in the November elections, and I am proposing and supporting congressional rules to do just that.”

“It is with trepidation and with hope that I move forward – trepidation that John Boehner will not fight as hard as he should; hope that our stronger House Republican majority and the Republican Senate will encourage a stronger fighter in John Boehner. I hope that we can have more floor amendments and conservative victories in the House. I hope that the House and the Senate, working together, can put our ideas on the President’s desk for him to sign or veto.”

“I am hopeful that Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader McCarthy, and the rest of leadership will let our new larger House Republican majority work its will and block much of the Obama policy.”

“But to suddenly elect new leadership on the opening day of the 114th Congress would throw our Republican Conference and the House into chaos, a chaos that only benefits President Obama and his failed policies.”

“So it is with this hope and trepidation that I make it clear that I will not violate the Republican Conference’s decision of November 13, 2014, and will vote for John Boehner to be Speaker. I hope that Speaker Boehner does not disappoint me and the American people.”

[mamabearCali]

He may be very well reasoned. But here is the question......WHY was there no one else to step up AND the cromnibus bill showed us Boehners true colors.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[ShotgunBlast]

“That being said, no candidate other than John Boehner stepped forward for the nomination at the Republican Conference meeting of November 13, 2014. Had a viable candidate sought the nomination at that meeting, I would have given serious consideration to supporting them due to my frustrations with the leadership style of John Boehner.”

“Further, no member nominated anyone else to serve as Speaker at that Republican Conference meeting. That meeting and its purpose was fully known well in advance, and it was attended by the vast majority of the members of the 114th Congress.”

...

“As of 5:00pm on January 5, neither candidate opposing Boehner has requested my vote, indicating they have no plan to campaign, win, or lead. To underscore the point, neither candidate has sent me a plan for leading this nation, nor have they sent me a plan for leading this body, their leadership team, or their leadership style.”

Thanks for sharing dorm. That was a real insightful statement.

[0ne5hot]

Rook Island's resident psycho, Vaas Montenegro explains The Definition of Insanity.
NSFW use of the f word
http://youtu.be/zEWJ-JgVS7Q

[ShotgunBlast]

Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) provides some more insight on today's Speaker vote.

There was an attempt to oust John Boehner as Speaker of the House today. I didn’t participate in it. That may make some people back home angry. I understand that, but I’ve got some experience with coup attempts against the Speaker, and what I learned two years ago factored heavily in my decision today not to join the mutiny.

First, I learned two years ago that people lie about how they are going to vote. And you cannot go into this kind of fight with people you do not trust. We walked onto the floor two years ago with signed pledges – handwritten promises – from more than enough people to deny Boehner his job. But when it came time to vote, almost half of those people changed their minds – including some of those who voted against Boehner today. Fool me once, shame on you… Today was even worse: there were never enough votes to oust Boehner to begin with. On top of that, some people who had publicly said in the past that they wouldn’t vote for Boehner did just that. This was an effort driven as much by talk radio as by a thoughtful and principled effort to make a change. It was poorly considered and poorly executed, and I learned first-hand that is no way to fight a battle. This coup today was bound to fail. And in fact, it failed worse than I expected, falling 11 votes short of deposing the Speaker. At least two years ago we only failed by six.

I also learned that the Floor of the House is the wrong place to have this battle. The hard truth is that we had an election for Speaker in November – just among Republicans. THAT was the time to fight. But not a single person ran against Boehner. Not one. If they had, we could’ve had a secret ballot to find out what the true level of opposition to John Boehner was. In fact, we could’ve done that as late as Monday night, on a vote of “no confidence” in the Speaker. But that didn’t happen…and at least one of the supposed challengers to Boehner today didn’t even go to the meeting last night. That told me a lot.

Some people wrote me encouraging me to vote for Louie Gohmert. I like Louie, but let’s be clear: Louie Gohmert was – is – never ever going to be Speaker of the House. I respect his passion, but he isn’t a credible candidate. That was proved today by the fact that he got three votes, despite all the national media attention he managed to grab. My colleague who got the most anti-Boehner votes was Daniel Webster of Florida who got 12 votes. I like Daniel. He is a nice guy, and a good thinker…but his lifetime Heritage Action score is 60% (by comparison, mine is 91%). And this was supposed to be the savior of the conservative movement? Would the House really have been more conservative if he had won?

The truth is, there was no conservative who could beat John Boehner. Period. People can ignore that, or they can wish it away, but that is reality.

Some people tried to argue that voting against Boehner would give conservatives leverage, or somehow force him to lead in a more conservative fashion, even if the coup attempt failed. All I can say to that is that the exact opposite happened two years ago: conservatives were marginalized, and Boehner was even freer to work with moderates and Democrats. My guess is that the exact same thing will happen again now. And I fail to see how that helps anything that conservatives know needs to be done in Washington.

I understand people’s frustration and anger over what is happening in Washington. And I also acknowledge that John Boehner may be partly to blame. But this was a fool’s errand. I am all for fighting, but I am more interested in fighting and winning than I am fighting an unwinnable battle.

Finally, the most troubling accusation I have heard regarding the Boehner vote is that I have “sold out” my conservative principles. All I can say is this: take a look at my voting record. It is one of the most conservative in Congress. And I was joined today by the likes of Jim Jordan, Raul Labrador, Trey Gowdy, Mark Sanford, Trent Franks, Tom McClintock, Matt Salmon, Tom Price, Sam Johnson, and Jeb Hensarling. If I “sold out” then I did so joined by some of the most tried and tested conservative voices in Washington.

I can say with 100% confidence that I have done exactly what I said I would do when I came to Washington: fight to cut spending, stop bad legislation, work to repeal Obamacare, and hold the President accountable for his actions. That will never change, and neither will I.

[ShotgunBlast]

Ron DeSantis (R-Fl), one of the Congress critters I follow, had this to say:

A lot of folks dislike John Boehner. People see the country chafing under the thumb of an aggressively left-wing president, yet view Boehner as someone more concerned with his tan and placating K St. interests than in advancing a conservative agenda and stopping Barack Obama.

I get it.

After all, from the CRomnibus to various bailouts and spending bills, I have consistently opposed Boehner's policies on the floor of the House -- often times placing myself in a lonely minority within my own party. This hasn’t exactly earned me a warm place in the hearts of the GOP leadership.

Nevertheless, I declined to participate in a coup plot against Boehner that failed today by 11 votes. The plot was ill-conceived, ill-executed and designed to fail. In my judgment, there was no chance that Boehner would be "fired" but the foreseeable failure of the coup will in fact serve to further marginalize conservatives within the House GOP at a time when we most need conservative energy in the House and Senate to check the Obama administration.

When the GOP Conference held elections for leadership nominations in November, not a single Republican stood up to challenge Boehner as the GOP nominee for Speaker. He was nominated by acclamation. I owe nothing to John Boehner as an individual, but I do owe a due regard to the collective judgment of my Republican colleagues for the nominee they selected. Had we nominated someone like Trey Gowdy during our November conference elections, I would expect my more liberal colleagues to show a similar regard for him on the House floor.
If the goal is to have a more principled, conservative speaker, I also question the wisdom of engaging in a haphazard floor fight. Boehner had an 11 vote cushion, but even if that cushion magically disappeared, the chance that a second ballot would lead to the emergence of a more conservative speaker was simply nonexistent. The strategy depended on the arrival of an elusive white knight on the second ballot because there was no viable alternative at the outset.

Now, Louie Gohmert and Ted Yoho are both fine men, but they have as much a chance to be elected speaker of the House as I do replacing Derek Jeter as the shortstop for the New York Yankees. Gohmert only received 3 votes while Yoho received 2.

I like Daniel Webster but he announced his candidacy an hour before the vote and never contacted me at all. I had no idea what he planned to do; all I could do is look at his record, which includes a lifetime FreedomWorks score of 63%, which is lower than Boehner. My lifetime score is 93%.

The conservative alternatives who would have a chance to garner majority support against Boehner are Paul Ryan, Jim Jordan, Trey Gowdy and Jeb Hensarling -- all not only declined to run but publicly endorsed Boehner. Even assuming Boehner might have stopped fighting on a second or subsequent ballot, the likely beneficiaries of the coup would not have been these conservatives who had no interest in running but rather ambitious members who are less conservative than Boehner – members that few Americans have ever heard of but who possess a following among the GOP Conference and could potentially be in power far longer than the aging Boehner.

Some have suggested that members are "scared" to oppose Boehner because we are worried about losing our plum committee assignments. Well, I do not have plum committee assignments in the first place -- I do not sit and have no desire to be on any "A" committees that are coveted by some members for their prestige and fundraising possibilities. Furthermore, I was never contacted by, nor discussed the vote with, any member of leadership. I was promised nothing and was not threatened with anything.

At the end of the day, the coup attempt fell woefully short because conservatives failed to mobilize an alternative for our November GOP Conference leadership election. Engaging in the political equivalent of Pickett's Charge will not erase this failure.

[dorminWS]

OK, so what must true conservatives do now? I submit there is yet hope.

The House seats are held by 247 republicans and 188 democrats.

That's 56.8% republican and 43.2% democrat.

The 25 republicans who openly voted against Boehner are slightly more than 10% of the republicans. Many more republicans have professed dissatisfaction with Boehner's leadership but decided (and stated) that there was no viable alternative.

SO, if just 5 additional republicans would join forces with the 25 open dissidents, they would constitute the balance of power in the House (assuming all 188 democrats voted against the republicans on a given measure and 217 (247 minus 30) republicans voted together the other way.

If the democrats can dragoon Boehner into eating a progressive crap sandwich to avoid gridlock and the appearance that the republicans can't govern, why can't a group of 30 conservatives push a more conservative agenda using the same tactic?

In other words, if the conservatives can't FIRE Boehner, then they should simply block his attempts to do stupid sh...uuuhh...stuff on a case-by-case basis. Of course, they need to figure out how to make it look like the democrats' fault. Maybe they could get the Koch brothers to buy ABC, CBS or NBC.

So the conservative dissident republicans need to caucus with and keep as amicable a relationship as possible with the "mainstream" republicans, but keep an active sub-caucus among their group. They also need to "tone down" the 4 or 5 most strident of the group that alienate moderate conservatives (Gomert comes to mind) so as to attract as many additional republicans as possible.

If they play their cards right, the stage is set for true conservatives to actually influence government. Damned nigh a de facto third party.

[ShotgunBlast]

OK, so what must true conservatives do now? I submit there is yet hope.

...

SO, if just 5 additional republicans would join forces with the 25 open dissidents, they would constitute the balance of power in the House (assuming all 188 democrats voted against the republicans on a given measure and 217 (247 minus 30) republicans voted together the other way.

If the democrats can dragoon Boehner into eating a progressive crap sandwich to avoid gridlock and the appearance that the republicans can't govern, why can't a group of 30 conservatives push a more conservative agenda using the same tactic?

In other words, if the conservatives can't FIRE Boehner, then they should simply block his attempts to do stupid sh...uuuhh...stuff on a case-by-case basis. Of course, they need to figure out how to make it look like the democrats' fault. Maybe they could get the Koch brothers to buy ABC, CBS or NBC.

...

If they play their cards right, the stage is set for true conservatives to actually influence government. Damned nigh a de facto third party.

I think the problem is that in order to create a more conservative legislative agenda, you have to flip enough of the RINOs to vote with the conservatives and based on their track record I don't see that happening. Boehner knows the conservatives will stick to their principles so he already knows going in he won't have those votes, but he can keep the RINOs in line through fear, intimidation, and political maneuvering, and he can buy Democrat support through concessions in legislation. Until more conservatives get voted into the House, the legislative agenda for the next two years will probably be close to what it has been for the last two years. Conservatives that vote against Boehner will continue to get marginalized, removed from positions on committees, etc.

Just in the last 24 hours it looks like four of those dissenters have already felt his wrath. http://www.mediaite.com/online/gop-reps ... t-boehner/

As far as it creating a de facto 3rd party, the only thing that would make that work is for the average conservative voter to not pull the lever for R in a general election if a conservative gets beat out by a RINO in the primary. But by then no one wants to send a strong message to the Republican party saying they don't want RINO candidates and deal with the short term pain of potentially electing a Democrat.

[ratherfish]

25= most significant opposition in 100 years..

Just sayin.

[dorminWS]

I think the problem is that in order to create a more conservative legislative agenda, you have to flip enough of the RINOs to vote with the conservatives and based on their track record I don't see that happening. Boehner knows the conservatives will stick to their principles so he already knows going in he won't have those votes, but he can keep the RINOs in line through fear, intimidation, and political maneuvering, and he can buy Democrat support through concessions in legislation. Until more conservatives get voted into the House, the legislative agenda for the next two years will probably be close to what it has been for the last two years. Conservatives that vote against Boehner will continue to get marginalized, removed from positions on committees, etc.

Just in the last 24 hours it looks like four of those dissenters have already felt his wrath. http://www.mediaite.com/online/gop-reps ... t-boehner/

They can still retaliate by voting against Boehner's proposals. If he sees he's lost his republican majority on a few issues, he'll pretty much have to re-think.

As far as it creating a de facto 3rd party, the only thing that would make that work is for the average conservative voter to not pull the lever for R in a general election if a conservative gets beat out by a RINO in the primary. But by then no one wants to send a strong message to the Republican party saying they don't want RINO candidates and deal with the short term pain of potentially electing a Democrat.

All that will accomplish is to hands the majority on the House back to the democrats. Do you really intend to advocate chaos when we are so much closer to making a difference? Give the democrats another election cycle in control and it will surely be too late for anything but armed rebellion to bring us back to true liberty.

[ShotgunBlast]

I'm sure people have been saying that since the first elections. The bottom line is that we've lived through Democrat rule and we've lived through Republican rule. In the end, both parties have made it worse.

All I can do is scratch my head when conservative Republicans wonder why there are so many RINOs in the party while at the same time voting for RINOs because they're even more frustrated by Democrats. Whether you like it or not, your vote for the RINO tells the party you want more candidates like that.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[ratherfish]

"In the end, both parties have made it worse."
Not as bad as the liberaltarians drawing votes to democrap funded red herring candidates to vote in left wing liberals.

We're finding out that the "conservative" we know, isn't as bad as the progressive/liberal fund raiser we don't.

Some of us here told you that before.

[SpanishInquisition]

Time for red dog Republicans, I reckon.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]