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Fire Boehner: We Only Need 16 Votes to Depose Boehner
If conservatives want to keep the House and win the Senate, we need to fire John Boehner as speaker of the House. We only need 16 House votes to do it.
As most conservatives know, Boehner and the House GOP Steering Committee decided to purge four conservative House members from their committee. Congressmen Justin Amash and Tim Huelskamp were removed from the House Budget Committee, and Congressmen David Schweikert and Walter Jones were cut from the Financial Services Committee.
Amash, Huelskamp, and Schweikert were targeted because they were too fiscally conservative—all three have voted against Boehner’s debt ceiling hikes. Amash and Huelskamp were the only two GOP votes against House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget.
Amash explained that vote at yesterday’s Bloggers’ Briefing at the Heritage Foundation, “It’s unacceptable to have unbalanced budgets until 2040.”
For anyone outside of DC, this statement seems obvious. Only in Washington is balancing the budget radical.
Many conservatives voted for the Ryan budget because they didn’t want to “let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” I understand that, but we shouldn’t criticize those who actually understand the depth of our debt problem and plan to propose real answers.
If Speaker Boehner wants to purge independent, bold conservatives—I think it’s time he gets fired as Speaker. Not only for the purge. He has failed to effectively win negotiations with President Obama and appointed moderate committee chairs. To the public, Boehner may appear radical but in reality he proposes milquetoast policies, like the tax-hikes he proposed this week.
While the caucus has already voted in support of John Boehner as speaker of the 113th Congress, the final floor vote doesn’t happen until early January.
Everyone thinks it’s a fairytale, but the Conservative Movement is capable of firing Boehner with just 16 votes.
The House rules demand that a Speaker receive a majority—218 votes—to be elected speaker. If no nominee for speaker receives 218, the House remains speakerless—as it did during parts of the Civil War.
If 16 House Republicans were to abstain from voting for Speaker, Boehner would only receive 217 votes.
Once we depose Boehner and cause a firestorm, the Republican caucus will get the memo: Pick someone else! These 16 Republicans only need to hold out until the caucus chooses a new leader.
For Speaker, I suggest members who are anti-establishment, but still have broad support. Congressmen Jim Jordan of Ohio would be my pick. He just finished leading the Republican Study Committee and proposed the best budget we’ve seen come out of Congress.
Republicans and conservatives deserve a more articulate, more conservative leader. In fact, we need one if we want to keep the House majority and take the Senate. Boehner has been Obama’s punching bag and has lost every public battle with the President. Now, he’s waging an internal war on conservatives.
Remember, we lost seats in the House under his leadership. He has failed as spokesman for the movement. Boehner has been in Congress for 22 years, and he looks like and embodies the typical DC politician. Can’t we find someone fresher to lead the party forward?
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