Breitbart) – Rep. Mick
Muvaney, one of the 28 Republicans who publicly supports replacing House
Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) with a Republican alternative, told
Breitbart News on Tuesday that Boehner does not have enough support within the
Republican conference to win re-election with just Republican votes.
Therefore, Mulvaney
said, should there be a vote on a privileged resolution on a motion to vacate
the chair of the House of Representatives—a fancy term for a vote to remove
Boehner from the speakership—the only way Boehner can keep his job is if
Democrats vote for him to bail him out.
“The math depends on
the Democrats, doesn’t it?” Mulvaney told Breitbart News in a phone interview
on Tuesday afternoon. “I think if all the Democrats were to vote against John,
he’d lose the Speakership, but I don’t think anyone knows where the Democrats
stand.”
Technically, the magic
number for Boehner to lose re-election without a Democrat infusion or some kind
of shenanigans where members don’t show up to vote or something akin to that is
29 Republicans voting against him. There are 28 Republicans publicly
opposed to Boehner’s re-election, but many more privately who have confirmed
that they can’t vote for Boehner to Mulvaney and others. Many more are
teetering on the edge of becoming public, and Boehner’s team is certainly
terrified, as Politico’s Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan detailed on
Tuesday morning.
Boehner’s spokesman
Kevin Smith—who is known to attack reporters, and did so in a statement this summer accusing Roll
Call’s Matt Fuller of pushing “propaganda” for the conservative House Freedom
Caucus—did not respond to a request for comment in response to this revelation.
A spokesman for House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also
did not respond when asked if she would allow any Democrats to vote for Boehner
if and when such a vote takes place. That spokesman, Drew Hammill, previously
told Roll Call that the division in the House GOP conference indicates a
party that’s unwilling to lead the country—but he wouldn’t signal which way
Pelosi would swing her party.
“As the American
people look to Congress for solutions to the challenges they face, they
increasingly see a Republican Congress dominated by obstruction, distraction
and dysfunction,” Hammill told Roll Call in July. “For more than 200 days, this
Republican Congress has failed to advance any measure to create jobs and growth
in our country, and leaves for August early with the prospect of only more
shutdowns and manufactured crises in store this fall. The American people
deserve better.”
If Boehner needs
Democrat votes to win re-election, Mulvaney said that would put Republicans in
Congress in an unprecedented situation. “Everybody is scratching their heads
about that one,” Mulvaney said. “Do you want a leader of your party who is in
that position because of support from the other party? It’s not a question I
think we’ve dealt with before. It certainly would be cause for some internal
discussion and I don’t honestly know if John would even want to put us in that
position.”
Mulvaney said he also
believes that if and when such a situation arises, that Boehner would consider
resigning from the speakership. “I certainly think he would consider it, though
I don’t know John that well,” Mulvaney said. “I don’t know if he would want to
continue to be Speaker if he has to rely on the Democrats to keep the
position.”
Mulvaney
praised Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) for offering the initial resolution
with the motion to vacate the chair—and explained why Meadows did
it. Mulvaney said:
Mark’s motion which
was filed in July, I’ve sort of been a touchstone for this—and if you ask Mark,
and I have, why he did it in July it’s because of what’s coming up ahead in
September: Planned Parenthood, the Iran agreement, the debt ceiling, the Budget
Control Act spending levels. There are so many things that Congress will take
up that are important to conservatives that it was Mark’s intention to send a
message to leadership that they be held accountable if they didn’t do the right
thing.
Mulvaney also told
Breitbart News that Boehner must disavow Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch
McConnell’s plans to fund Planned Parenthood, especially after recent videos
came out showing the organization engages in the practice of selling aborted
baby body parts to the highest bidder.
Mulvaney said: If John
wants to tie his wagon [on Planned Parenthood] to Mitch McConnell that could be
real troublesome. What John needs to do is distance himself from Mitch
McConnell and call on McConnell to change the filibuster rules. If the Speaker
of the House would come and say the Democrats are obstructing, we need to at
least make them talk the filibuster and go back to the original intention of
that rule and not allow some arcane rules of the Senate block the Constitution,
that would be a move in the right direction for John. From a certain
perspective, he has to choose between the Republican base and Mitch McConnell.
Now I don’t know which way [he’s going to go]. I think the Planned Parenthood
vote may tell us which side he picks.
When it comes to Iran,
Mulvaney explained why the Congressional leadership is currently not treating
President Obama’s nuclear arms deal with the leading state sponsor of terrorism
as a treaty. He said: I think that goes back to something way down in the weeds
that’s fairly arcane and you may know more about it than I do. But as I
understand it this is the argument: Some in the Senate took the position that
this was a treaty and that it required 67 votes to affirm. The administration
took the position that it was not a treaty because it did not require a change
in American statute, U.S. Code. There was some disagreement from a legal
perspective between the White House and the Senate over what constituted a
treaty and that the agreement we have now is the compromise between those two
positions. I don’t know—I wasn’t involved in that. But my understanding in that
the administration believes that Congress should have no say at all.
Mulvaney also said
that a lot of the angst against leadership stems from both Boehner’s and
McConnell’s surrender of the congressional power of the purse to Obama’s
executive branch: In the House—I can only speak for the House—the amount of
control we have is the power of the purse. If we’re not willing to talk about a
lapse in appropriations over selling dead baby parts I doubt seriously we’ll
have a discussion about a lapse in appropriations over a nuclear-powered Iran.
We’re afraid to shut the government down. We gave up the power of the purse
about four and a half years ago. If you’re not willing to go to the mat on
defunding anything, then you are not willing to enforce the power of the purse.
Mulvaney said he’s not
entirely sure on what schedule such a vote to remove Boehner would come up—but
it could technically come at any time since any member can offer a resolution
to vacate the chair as a privileged resolution and get a vote on it on the
House floor fairly quickly.
Mulvaney said when
asked when specifically he thinks such a motion would come up for a vote: If I
could predict the future I’d probably be doing your job better than mine. I
don’t know. I think that, let me put it to you this way: the pressure from the
base to bring up that motion will grow with each additional disappointment that
our House leadership delivers. And to a certain extent, that pressure will also
grow with each disappointment that the Senate leadership delivers. So I think
the base doesn’t know if they can change Mitch McConnell but they have learned
there is a way to replace John Boehner. Every mistake that McConnell makes will
flow to Boehner. So that’s why John has got some difficult decisions to make on
how we wants to either stick with the base and the party or stick with Mitch
McConnell.
Mulvaney said he
believes the grassroots across America have been instrumental in getting
Congress to this tipping point: We’ve all heard the same stories reported in
the press that on the day Meadows filed his motion some of John Boehner’s staff
that wanted to take a vote right away—and that one or two members of Boehner’s
staff said ‘well maybe we should whip this a little bit to find out’ and they
found out that they didn’t have the votes. They found out that if all the
Democrats voted against the Speaker that they would have lost the Speakership
on July 30 of 2015. So clearly even folks who like Boehner will find it
difficult to vote for him. I have had friends of mine from the moderate wing of
our party say they just can’t afford to vote for John again, that it’s just not
worth it, that it’s not worth getting a primary back home over a speakership
vote. [They believe that] that vote should be inconsequential. That vote should
be a unifying vote of the party, not a dividing vote. Clearly if you’ve already
got 28 folks like me who have said they can’t vote for John again, who have
said they would vote to vacate, there’s got to be a lot more than that that are
simply unwilling or unable to say that publicly.
He added that when
America has billionaire Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson, and former
Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina polling at more than 50 percent in most
polls—and when throwing in Sens. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen.
Rand Paul (R-KY) more than 60 percent—there’s a “rejection” of the
political establishment going on.
Mulvaney said: It’s a
rejection of the current Republican establishment, yes. You’ve got a guy who up
until recently was pro-choice, and folks don’t care. Who up until recently was
a Democrat and folks don’t care. Just up until recently knew he was for a
single-payer healthcare system and folks don’t care. They just know he’s not
establishment. He may be establishment and they don’t care—this is a guy who
used to write a bunch of checks. They just don’t want the same ordinary course
of business, they don’t want the same names who have been running the party for
the last 30 years. They’re sick and tired of it. It may be irrational
exuberance, but it certainly is exuberance for Donald Trump, for Ben Carson and
for Carly Fiorina.
Mulvaney said the
American people can help him and Meadows by calling their Congressmen–and by
calling Boehner’s office asking him to lead again. Mulvaney said:
The folks need to
call—obviously—get involved and talk to their own member of Congress and tell
them how they feel. I’d rather deal with the issues first before the politics.
I would much rather have people call Boehner’s office and say stand firm on
Planned Parenthood than I would have them call their member of Congress and say
get rid of John Boehner. I’m more interested in the end result—I don’t care who
the speaker is, as long as we get to defund Planned Parenthood. I don’t care
who the speaker is as long as we abide by the Budget Control Act limits. I
don’t care who the speaker is as long as we are reasonable in dealing with the
debt ceiling. But if the three of those things break against fiscal
conservatives and against social conservatives, you got to ask yourself why we
have the leadership we do? And I want to be clear than when I say ‘leadership’
I’m meaning both McConnell and Boehner—it’s the GOP leadership, and it’s not
just Boehner. It’s McConnell too. McConnell has got to do something about these
filibuster rules.
Mulvaney noted that he
has a hard time answering his constituents back in South Carolina what the
difference is between McConnell’s GOP Senate and the Senate when it was run by
now Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) under Democratic control.
“Right now, when I go
back home and talk to people over August, they ask me what’s the difference
between a Mitch McConnell controlled Senate and a Harry Reid controlled
Senate—and I don’t have an answer for them,” Mulvaney said. “Mitch McConnell
better start delivering on those promises or change for the better if we are
going to put Republicans in charge of the Senate. Rep. Trey Gowdy
(R-SC) and I raised a lot of money in South Carolina for Republican
campaigns for Senate. Now the people who wrote the checks are asking us why
they did it and I don’t have a good answer for them.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/08/ exclusive-mulvaney-boehner-lacks-enough-gop-votes-for-re-election-his-future-depends-on-whether-dems-bail-him-out/
- See more at:
http://www.teaparty.org/congressman-boehner-lacks-gop-votes-re-election-needs-dems-bail-118038/#sthash.e1LP8ZGA.dpuf
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