Posts

Deposed GOP Lawmaker Suggests He Could Vote Against Boehner As Speaker (+video)

/4 Comments/in , /by

photo credit: gage skidmore

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) suggested Friday he might not support Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) for Speaker.

“Well, right now I’m not very happy with the Speaker so let’s see what happens over the next several weeks, let’s put it that way,” Amash said.

Amash is one of four House Republicans removed from their plum committee posts this week by Boehner.

The move has triggered opposition from outside conservative groups, some of whom have launched efforts to replace Boehner as Speaker. Within the GOP conference, the response has been more muted.

In an interview with CNN, Amash refused to say whether he would support Boehner for another term as Speaker.

Read more from this story HERE.

Boehner Orchestrating the GOP’s Demise

/25 Comments/in , /by

photo credit: donkeyhotey

It’s a contest of wills and guess who is winning? President Obama, of course. And that’s because the president is up against the GOP’s equivalent of Churchill’s “Boneless Wonder,” Speaker John Boehner. Matched against the president, Boehner is making Ned Beatty’s hapless character from the classic movie Deliverance look downright gritty.

Boehner the Boneless Wonder’s beta dog routine is doing much to deep-six the Party of Lincoln. Hyperbole? Don’t grumpy grassroots conservatives grouse incessantly that establishment Republicans are screwing the — well, putting it more politely, screwing it up and that the Grand Old Party will go the way of the pterodactyl?

For the insulated tin-eared prowlers of the halls of Congress (Boehner being chief), hear this: The times, they have a-changed — radically so. The context is dramatically different today than America before the Hugo Chavez-in-chief wanna-be in the White House, the august and empurpled Barack Hussein Obama, took the nation’s reins (“On Dancer, on Comet, on Boehner!)

As of this writing, there’s been no stout opposition — no bold proclamation of principles, no declaration of a fight for limited government and liberty — from the speaker in the teeth of the president’s insistence to tax the lights out of “rich” Americans (and, shhh!, every other working American, too, eventually). Boehner and his lackey GOP colleagues remind the history-minded of the French in the face of the Nazi blitzkrieg: throw up those white flags before the speaker’s perfect hair is mussed.

As Dana Milbank opines in The Washington Post: “One of Boehner’s lieutenants, Pete Roskam of Illinois, stepped to the microphones, essentially pleading for the president to show mercy. ‘President Obama has an unbelievable opportunity to be a transformational president — that is, to bring the country together,’ he said. ‘Or he can devolve into zero-sum-game politics, where he wins and other people lose.'”

Read more from this article HERE.

DeMint Takes Parting Shot at Boehner (+video)

/26 Comments/in , /by

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who shocked Washington on Thursday with the announcement that he would resign his Senate seat in January to become president of the the Heritage Foundation, sent a parting shot at Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) over the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.

“I’m not with Boehner,” DeMint said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “This government doesn’t need any more money, this country needs less government.”

House Republican leaders on Monday proposed a counteroffer to President Obama in the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. The proposal would reduce spending by $2.2 trillion through a combination of spending cuts and entitlement reforms, and would produce $800 billion in new revenue without raising tax rates, although the plan doesn’t specify how.

Two high-profile conservative groups lashed out at the GOP offer, one of which was the Heritage Action for America, a sister organization to the Heritage Foundation.

“Republicans were reelected in the House to stop Pres. Obama’s agenda, not figure out creative ways to fund it,” Heritage Action for America communications director Dan Holler told The Hill in an email.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin “Goes Nuclear” on Boehner, DeMint Criticizes Him For Wanting to Destroy Jobs

/12 Comments/in , /by

DeMint Criticizes Boehner’s Deficit-Cut Plan

By Kathleen Hunter and Richard Rubin. House Speaker John Boehner’s proposal to generate $800 billion in new revenue “will destroy American jobs” and Republicans should oppose it, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina said today.

The comments from DeMint, co-founder of the Senate’s anti- tax Tea Party caucus, represent a strong indictment of Boehner’s plan from a fellow Republican lawmaker and highlight a divide within the party. Boehner yesterday proposed a $2.2 trillion deficit-cutting proposal that seeks $800 billion in revenue in the next decade from an overhaul of the tax code that would curb some breaks.

“Speaker Boehner’s $800 billion tax hike will destroy American jobs and allow politicians in Washington to spend even more, while not reducing our $16 trillion debt by a single penny,” DeMint said in a statement. “Republicans must oppose tax increases and insist on real spending reductions that shrink the size of government and allow Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money.”

The remarks signify that Boehner will have to tamp down opposition from the anti-spending wing of his conference — and probably rely on some Democratic votes — to advance legislation to avert the so-called fiscal cliff through the House. Unless Congress acts, more than $600 billion in tax increases and spending reductions will begin in January.

“Is John Boehner prepared to bring this measure to a vote with the understanding that it will pass with a bipartisan majority? If he is, let’s press forward in negotiations,” the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, Richard Durbin of Illinois, said today in an interview. “But if this is just a negotiation to win over the Tea Party Republicans, I am not very hopeful.” Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin Goes Nuclear on Boehner

By the Right Scoop. Mark Levin has had enough, saying that Huelskamp was elected by American citizens in his district who sent him there to vote the way he pledged to them he’d vote, and now Huelskamp is being treated like crap from Speaker Boehner because he’s not falling in line? Levin asks “who the hell does Speaker Boehner think he is?” Listen to the audio HERE.

Boehner Scoffs After Called on Purging Real Conservatives from Powerful Committee

/23 Comments/in , , /by

Boehner Spokesman Kevin Smith responds- “The Steering Committee makes decisions based on a range of factors.”

House Speaker John Boehner and GOP leadership have removed several conservative House members from their respective powerful committee positions, Breitbart News has learned.

Effective next Congress, leadership pulled Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash and Arizona Republican Rep. David Schweikert off committees from which they could exert conservative pressure on fiscal matters. Amash and Huelskamp were pulled from the Budget Committee and Schweikert from the Financial Services Committee.

Huelskamp, a freshman elected during the 2010 tea party wave, thinks the leadership move to pull him from the powerful committee is revenge for him standing up for conservatism. “It is little wonder why Congress has a 16 percent approval rating: Americans send principled representatives to change Washington and get punished in return,” Huelskamp said in a Monday night statement. “The GOP leadership might think they have silenced conservatives, but removing me and others from key committees only confirms our conservative convictions. This is clearly a vindictive move, and a sure sign that the GOP Establishment cannot handle disagreement.”

Earlier on Monday in an interview with Breitbart News, Huelskamp again reaffirmed his support for the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) anti-tax pledge. He’s encouraging his colleagues in the House to come out publicly against potential tax increases and asking citizens across the country to help.

Read more from this story HERE.

Is the Grand Old Party Over?

/9 Comments/in , /by

photo credit: donkeyhoteyToday is a monumentally important day that is being treated as a fait accompli by the Beltway ruling class and its partners, the legacy media. This morning, the Congress is scheduled to select its leaders for the coming session. If all goes according to plan, Republicans will double down on stupid – ignoring the conservatives who gave them control of the House and reappointing the same leadership team that turned the triumph of 2010 into the disaster of 2012.

In the historic 2010 midterm elections, conservatives gave Republicans a chance to prove that they’d repented of their huge-spending nanny-state ways. It was not that conservatives were won over by a Republican establishment that, during the Bush years, had run up an astounding $5 trillion of debt while creating new entitlements and launching an ill-conceived experiment in sharia-democracy building. Instead, it was that we needed to stop Obama’s doubly expensive gallop to the left, to a post-American rejection of our liberty culture. In the short term, Republicans were the only game in town.

Over the long haul, however, there were two alternatives: Either (a) the Republican Party would prove that it had become an effective vehicle for advocating and using its power to begin putting into effect the dramatic change necessary to reverse – not just halt, reverse – the debt abyss and the metastasis of the central government; or (b) the Republican Party would prove that it was not up to this challenge, would substitute lame excuses (“We only control one-half of one-third of the government”) for steely spines, and would therefore demonstrate that conservatives would be better off abandoning the GOP and establishing a new vehicle.

We’ve now seen enough to draw a conclusion: the Republican Party says what it believes must be said to entice conservative votes at election time, but it is not remotely serious about implementing limited government policies or dealing with the two central challenges of our age, existentially threatening deficit spending and Islamic supremacism.

Under the leadership of progressive-lite House Speaker John Boehner and his fellow professional Washington moderates in the GOP Senate leadership, congressional Republicans agreed to budgeting that internalized into its baselines Obama’s exorbitant stimulus spending. They signed off on a reckless extension of the government’s line of credit to an astounding $16.4 trillion, then cynically insulted our intelligence by attempting to obscure and deny their approval of it – and presently, they are laying the groundwork to raise this “debt ceiling” to a mind-boggling $19 trillion, the next stop on the road to $22 trillion and beyond. As Mark Steyn observes, the federal government now borrows a staggering $188 billion million per hour, adding $1 trillion to the debt every nine months. Contrary to what the GOP tells you, none of this could happen without the approval of the Republican-controlled House.

Read more from this article HERE.

House Speaker Boehner Gives Up Effort to Repeal Obamacare Because of Obama Win

/23 Comments/in , /by

Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner said he would not make it his mission to repeal the controversial healthcare reform law following the re-election of President Barack Obama.

‘The election changes that,’ Boehner told ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer on Thursday when asked if repealing the law was ‘still your mission.’

‘It’s pretty clear that the President was re-elected. Obamacare is the law of the land,’ Boehner said.

Under Boehner’s leadership, the House tried repeatedly to repeal the healthcare law, the signature domestic measure of Obama’s first term.

While a few provisions were eliminated or changed, Senate Democrats blocked outright termination of the law.

Boehner added that parts of the law were going to be difficult to implement and that everything had to be on the table as lawmakers try to create a path to a balanced budget.

Read more from this story HERE.

Boehner ‘Confident’ GOP, Obama Can Reach Deal on Immigration Reform

/5 Comments/in , /by

photo credit: medilldcSpeaker John Boehner said Thursday he was “confident” Republicans could agree to a comprehensive immigration bill.

Boehner (R-Ohio) made the comment in an interview with ABC News released two days after President Obama’s decisive reelection victory over Mitt Romney.

Obama’s win was fueled by Hispanic voters, who made up a larger portion of the electorate than they did four years ago and voted overwhelmingly for Obama. The president won Latino voters by 44 points, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

The defeat and those figures have triggered a round of soul-searching by Republicans.

Boehner offered optimism that his party could come to an agreement with Obama on immigration, a subject that has hurt the GOP with Hispanic voters.

Read more from this story HERE.

House GOP Passes Budget Including Funding for Planned Parenthood, Obamacare

/5 Comments/in , /by

The Republican-majority House of Representatives on Thursday passed a $1.047 trillion bill funding the federal government through March 2013 that will permit funding for Planned Parenthood and ObamaCare–including the regulation that took effect on Aug. 1 that will require virtually all health plans in the United States to cover, without fees or co-pay, sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortions.

The vote was 329-91, and the bill now goes to the Senate for expected approval next week.

The bill funds the government for six months into the new fiscal year and for almost five months after the November elections. Congress turned to the stop-gap measure after failing to pass any of the 12 appropriation bills necessary to fund day-to-day government operations.

The Catholic bishops of the United States have unanimously declared the Obamacare sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation an “unjust and illegal mandate” that violates the right to free exercise of religion not only of Catholic institutions but also of Catholic business owners and workers.

The bill, a continuing resolution (CR), does not prohibit funding for either ObamaCare programs or Planned Parenthood. Nor does it stop the government from enforcing regulations, such as the mandate from the Health and Human Services Department that nearly all health insurance plans provide contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs free of charge.

Read more from this story HERE.

Why did the RNC “Kick the Hornet’s Nest” With Respect to the Tampa Rules Change?

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo credit: CW2 Harting

Why did the RNC “kick the hornet’s nest” with respect to the Tampa rules change? Richard Falknor of the Blue Ridge Forum suggests that it was

because the Romney Team has already prepared plans to govern from the ‘center‘ – ‘compromising’ with the Democrats in one ‘grand bargain’ after another (as they once expected president Barack Obama to have compromised with speaker John Boehner) — and making big government ‘more efficient,’ marginally less costly, and more ‘suburban housewife friendly.’

Ineptly compromising is the way speaker Boehner now leads the House — major bills passed often have bi-partisan but not necessarily full conservative support. And Marylander Daniel Horowitz (Madison Project) here (video) further illuminates the problem in his “Boehner Calls Opponents of TARP ‘Knuckledraggers’”

Reining in the administrative state has not, moreover, been part of the GOP Establishment’s agenda. And, in our experience, they do not see ‘conviction’ conservative politicians as serious players.

Conservatives must assume that the Romney Team doesn’t go about kicking hornets’ nests for pleasure and profit. Ben Ginsberg seems to be a capable and savvy advocate, whether we agree with his clients’ objectives or not.

Our best guess is that the Romney Team anticipates conservative pushback during Mr. Romney’s first term as president. This is because the Romney Team has likely planned some initiatives that will be distasteful to conservatives. Conservatives in turn need to identify those schemes before they are launched, and effectively advance plausible alternatives.

Read more from this story HERE.