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Boehner
After the “Plan B” vote debacle some in the Republican Party are smelling blood in the water. According to Republican sources that spoke to Reuters, Speaker Boehner was down 40 to 50 votes for his “Plan B” proposal despite intense lobbying from both himself and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Do the terms “leader” even still apply here?
Not surprisingly, what were once whispers inside Washington about removing Boehner have begun leaking. From Breitbart:
Several conservative House Republican members are contemplating a plan to unseat Speaker John Boehner from his position on January 3, Breitbart News has exclusively learned. Staffers have compiled a detailed action plan that, if executed, could make this a reality.
At the moment there does not seem to be a clear rival to Boehner, just an agreement Boehner has to go. The first goal of the conspirators is to change the rules for a secret ballot rather than a roll call vote for Speaker, with the second goal being finding a new Speaker. In essence, Anybody But Boehner.
According to the strategy memo, in what can only be called sweet irony, the conspirators plan to use Speaker Boehner’s opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act or “card check” as the grounds for a secret ballot vote for Speaker. If the opponents to Boehner can change the rules for a secret ballot vote, his survival as Speaker would be in serious jeopardy. Now that’s something worth crying about.
21 Comments
Thank you for this diary. I hope you’ll continue to follow this story as it develops. We need to see where this is going, because (I believe) it’s going somewhere.
I can believe it. On the other hand, I’m not going to take Breitbart “News” at its word on this or any other subject.
Don’t you all just know that slimy little weasel sonofabitch Cantor is licking his chops at the thought?
Thanks DS.
So far, those wingnuts have been the best protection against chaining the CPI.
I’m not going to cry if boehner loses. It may be that the t-party make better dims than the dims. I hope they keep blocking.
I don’t think it matters who’s the Speaker. The Republican Caucus is locked into a Death Spiral. If Cantor becomes Speaker they’ll just pass more ludicrous bills and become more irrelevant. Unfortunately, we’ll all have to suffer through their ineffectual power struggle. The prospect of a major recession due to the Fiscal Cliff will only further weaken America causing incalculable suffering for millions.
I want to know how many Republicans could potentially retake the Party and wrestle power back from the Tea Party wingnuts if at all possible or due we have continue having our lives effected and dictated by a minority element of our political party system.
For example yesterday’s ludicrous manifesto by the NRA was started by the statement that NRA membership is only of 4 million people. Seems to me that being a country of 300+ million 4mm is a pretty small number yet they control an overwhelming representative portion of Congress.
How do we stand up to insanity?
Yup, that was my first thought. Eric “PeeWee” Cantor’s sweaty little hands are all over this. That guy is the smarmiest little prick politician I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been watching them since Adam Clayton Powell.
Book Salon up with Jon Krampner’s Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food hosted by Toby Wollin
If this be true, then ANY austerity program (deficit reduction) will have the same effect.
All the palaver goes to prove that Krugman & Baker and the MMC group (and by implication Keynesian Economics) are all correct. That is, Government Spending fills the demand gap in a depression or recession.
I don’t think that many sane thinkers would dispute that. Austerity will simply throw the economy into more of a death spiral, just as the 1% want because that will make them stronger and stronger as we 99% have no where to turn for support.
How very convenient for Eric Cantor. Hell, he might not even need to resort to the use of his ice pick.
On the other hand, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we ultimately discovered that Boehner and Cantor had already made a deal. If so, the conversation might have gone something like this:
“Hey Eric, if you think you can do any better at beating back the delusional, psychotic factions, then be my guest. Fuck this noise, I quit. And pour me another double…”
Obviously, Boehner’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he’s also been around Capitol Hill long enough to understand that if he hands off the gavel before the party implodes into Whigs II, history will not view him quite so unfavorably. Cantor, on the other hand? That prick will look like the sleazy, conniving, back-stabber that he’s always been. As a straight-up creep-vibe generator, Cantor takes the prize, followed closely by the Zombie-Eyed Granny-Starver.
Copy that.
If boner bites the dust it will leave cantor, ryan, mccarthy,and kingston as the negotiators in congress, and they are the ‘smart ones’.
Their dumbfuck bench is incredibly deep with virginia foxx, joe barton, louie gomert, bachmann and that idiot cracker who chairs the science committee. Come to think of it, we are in for a rocky two years. Will the states that sent them to congress have buyer’s remorse?….
I’m not too sanguine considering gomert ran unopposed and most of the republican caucus has been there for a while with 50ish newbies.
Of course they’re right. Back in 2008 Krugman was brought into the Obama circle, but he called for $1.6 Trillion in stimulus and was shown the door, quickly. Some call for a lot more and didn’t even get an invite. Now the Chicago School of Economics faces the reality that Friedman ( and his acolytes ) was an economic charlatan or Keynes and his followers were more honest to their country’s rulers. In a time of crisis one expects or hopes for honesty from all the citizens, more so from it’s elites. Should they, anymore? Purists and Randians didn’t get their hands on the levers of power until the last 30 years. Who paid for this folly? Obama is a temporary and weak antidote to this insidious cancer in the body politic. Whether it’s Boehner or Kevin McCarthy doesn’t mean a hoot. ” Extremism in the pursuit of stinky, pet economic theories, dressed up as policy, is no virtue. ” Peppy Le Pew Little Beau Pepe ’52
How is o an antidote, weak or otherwise? He is feeding the “insidious cancer” by enabling the charlatans, to put it mildly.
Well, he’s provided some stimulus, mortgage relief, and unemployment extensions, etc. Do you think the people would’ve of gotten something from the Republicans? Hell, they can’t even fix the effin’ streets. Sen. Al( Pothole Al ) D’amato would’ve voted across the aisle for that. Not a pure enough Fascist, perhaps? I think he’s dead so there’s little chance re-education will work. The current Republican’s want to privatize everything. Everything except liability insurance, of course! P.S. I don’t paint my house trim with a wallpaper brush, either.
o has done so little that it is invisible to the average person. I did not endorse the repugs because they would have done no more, at best, than o. All of the evil (as I see it) that he plans will so far outweigh any good that the good will be swallowed by a black hole. You know as well as I do what he has planned and has done already so if it is good enough for you then there is nothing more to say.
Cutting Social Security and/or Medicare will thrown some seniors, disabled, widows, widowers and orphans into a death spiral.
Weak or strong, Obama is not an antidote to shit. If anything, he aids and abets Republicans.
The alleged mortgage relief program was designed to fail and it did. Your original claim was that Obama was an antidote to Republicans, not whether the people would have gotten more from Republicans. Thing is, Obama policies are Republican policies. Geithner is a Republican and all Obama’s top economic advisors have been Republian or DLC, which is about the same thing.
However, I don’t think Republicans would have done more damage than Obama has. For one thing, no Republican could have been the first Democrat to promise to cut Social Security and Medicare–and before he even got inaugurated, to boot.
Democrats would have unified against any Republican who threatened those programs, much as they unified against Bush when he tried. However, Democrats are out on all the networks pimping a Grand Bargain on behalf of Obama.
Each party is a divided house. There should be a massive re-alignment, with conservatives from both Parties banding together to form a new party and liberals from both Parties banding together to form a different new party.
Then again, that would require poll-iticians [sic] to be honest about who they really are, so it is highly unlikely.