Posted on 12/19/2014 5:08:12 AM PST by cotton1706
The final recount from November’s election had not even been finished when current House Speaker John Boehner blew the mandate.
Voters gave the Republican Party a majority in the House of Representatives they had not seen in 80 years. Voters kicked Democrats to the curb in the Senate as the GOP had a nine-vote swing.
snip
On Jan. 3, a new Congress begins and one of the first orders of business in the House of Representatives is to pick a new speaker. The conventional wisdom is Mr. Boehner will be re-elected speaker. That may well happen and if it does it will be a disaster for the Republican Party.
The conservative base of the party is pretty much in open revolt and without the base, the losses of 2006 and 2008 will seem mild compared to what is coming in 2016.
Mr. Boehner has repeatedly shown he is not the man to lead the House. He cannot build a Republican coalition. He cannot lead, and he will not fight.
Conservatives cannot simply oppose Mr. Boehner. That is not a plan. Some conservative groups are pushing Trey Gowdy of South Carolina as speaker. That makes a great headline but it isn’t going to happen. Mr. Gowdy has only been in the House since 2011 and has not built the kind of relationships necessary to lead. Many people regard him as a bomb thrower. Most conservatives consider that to be a complement. While it is, it is not necessarily a positive attribute for someone to be speaker who, by definition, must build coalitions within the party.
There is one conservative who has been in Congress long enough and who has a solidly conservative record.
That is Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Almost anyone but Boehner. Even a jackass would be an improvement.
Technically, yes, but it doesn't actually work like that in practice. The parties caucus privately and each comes up with a single candidate - so in theory if the majority of the GOP caucus chooses Blackburn over Boehner, it would come down to Blackburn vs Pelosi, even though there isn't an official "slate" of candidates and each member may vote for anyone (s)he sees fit to.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record
Rated 100% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-life stance
Rated 25% by the NAACP, indicating an anti-affirmative-action stance
Rated 0% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance
Rated 100% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-Family-Value voting record
Rated 0% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record
Rated 17% by the NEA, indicating anti-public education votes
Rated A by the NRA, indicating a pro-gun rights voting record
Rated 0% by the CTJ, indicating opposition to progressive taxation
Rated 100% by FAIR, indicating a voting record restricting immigration
Rated 100% by USBC, indicating a sealed-border stance
Rated A by the ALI, indicating a strongly anti-amnesty stance
Rated 11% by SANE, indicating a pro-military voting record
Rated 0% by the CAF, indicating opposition to energy independence (WEASEL WORDS ALERT: “ opposition to energy independence”= opposition to money-wasting and ineffectual “green” energy.)
(Source: www.ontheissues.org)
Over the years of reading political articles, I don't believe I have ever heard of Blackburn. This means to me that she has not said or done anything of public (media) interest. That doesn't sound like a strong, dynamic leader to me.
“The squeaky wheel gets the grease”. The Liberals have had great success with this idea. It's time we had a Speaker who can speak loud & long about the absurdity of Liberal proposals.
The GOPe & likely the Times want another weak compromiser who builds another coalition that continues to legislate us into poverty, misery, & early death (Obamacare).
That is all very good, but how a candidate has voted is of far less importance than other, much more difficult to discern, characteristics: how are they going to fight the left? How are they going to work with the small contingent of conservatives in the senate? Do they understand the nature of the modern left, and do they understand that this is political war, not theater? How are they going to muzzle the existing Republican establishment? How are they going to present conservatism? Do they recognize that we may be very close to a point of no going back, in terms of deviation from our constitutional roots?
These are the kinds of questions that really matter, and no track record of votes will tell you that. While it may be true that she (or anyone) would be better than Boehner, what really matters is who, when push comes to shove, is she going to stand with: the Cruz’s and Lee’s of the world, or the McConnell’s and the McCain’s?
The Speaker has to win the majority of the vote of the whole House: at least 218 votes.
Your scenario is false as even a child can see.
Some interesting reading from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives
The House of Representatives elects the Speaker of the House on the first day of every new Congress and in the event of the death or resignation of an incumbent Speaker. The Clerk of the House of Representatives requests nominations: there are normally two, one from each major party (each party will have previously met to decide on its nominee). The Clerk then calls the roll of the Representatives-elect, each Representative-elect indicating the surname of the candidate he or she is supporting. Representatives-elect are not restricted to voting for one of the nominated candidates and may vote for any person, even for someone who is not a member (or member-elect) of the House at all. They may also abstain by voting “present”.[3]
To be elected as Speaker, a candidate must receive an absolute majority of all votes cast for individuals, i.e. excluding those who abstain. If no candidate wins such a majority, then the roll call is repeated until a Speaker is elected. The last time repeated votes were required was in 1923, when the Speaker was elected on the ninth ballot.[3]
The new Speaker is then sworn in by the Dean of the United States House of Representatives, the chamber’s longest-serving member.
In modern practice, the Speaker is chosen by the majority party from among its senior leaders either when a vacancy in the office arrives or when the majority party changes. It is usually obvious within two or three weeks of a House election who the new Speaker will be. Previous Speakers have been minority leaders (when the majority party changes, as they are already the House party leader, and as the minority leader are usually their party’s nominee for Speaker), or majority leaders (upon departure of the current Speaker in the majority party), assuming that the party leadership hierarchy is followed. In the past, other candidates have included chairpersons of influential standing committees.
So far, the Democrats have always elevated their minority leader to the Speakership upon reclaiming majority control of the House. However, Republicans have not always followed this leadership succession pattern. In 1919, Republicans bypassed James Robert Mann, R-IL, who had been Minority Leader for eight years, and elected a backbencher representative, Frederick H. Gillett, R-MA, to be Speaker. Mann had “angered many Republicans by objecting to their private bills on the floor” and was also a protégé of autocratic Speaker Joseph Cannon, R-IL (1903–1911), and many members “suspected that he would try to re-centralize power in his hands if elected Speaker.”[4] More recently, although Robert H. Michel was Minority Leader in 1994 when the Republicans regained control of the House in the 1994 midterm elections, he had already announced his retirement and had little or no involvement in the campaign. Including the “Contract with America”, which was unveiled six weeks before Election Day. Michel opted not to seek re-election because he had been isolated in the caucus by Minority Whip Newt Gingrich and other younger and more aggressive Congressmen.
It is expected that members of the House vote for their party’s candidate. If they do not, they usually vote for someone else in their party or vote “present”. Those who vote for the other party’s candidate often face serious consequences, up to and including the loss of seniority. The last instance where a representative voted for the other party’s candidate was in 2000, when Democrat Jim Traficant of Ohio voted for Republican Dennis Hastert. In response, the Democrats stripped him of his seniority and he lost all of his committee posts.
If the Speaker’s party loses control of the House in an election, and if the Speaker and Majority Leader both remain in the leadership hierarchy, they would become the Minority Leader and Minority Whip, respectively. As the minority party has one less leadership position after losing the Speaker’s chair, there may be a contest for the remaining leadership positions. Most Speakers whose party has lost control of the House have not returned to the party leadership (Tom Foley lost his seat, Dennis Hastert returned to the backbenches and resigned from the House in late 2007). However, Speakers Joseph William Martin, Jr. and Sam Rayburn did seek the post of Minority Leader in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Nancy Pelosi is the most recent example of an outgoing Speaker who was elected Minority Leader, after the Democrats lost control of the House in the 2010 elections.
We deserve better than Boehner though.
Any moderate conservative would better serve conservatives, the caucus and the country.
She’d need 30 votes.
That’s as close to ‘impossible’ as there is in this world.
A weird, but at least plausible, scenario is Boehner elected by Democrat votes.
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If the conservatives would vote as a unified block on anything and I mean anything the Vichy republicans and the other liberal democrats bring up it would throw a monkey wrench into the works big time. They as a caucus need to start their own campaign fund raising organization to compete with the liberals in Washington.
So I would not pass the spell check on “Complement”. Oops :D
May I recommend Mike Ditka? He will bust some heads.
5.56mm
Whatever it takes, get rid of this Boehner bastard.
Having seen Blackburn on TV, with her calm but stern demeanor and her Conservative rating I’d say she would do good as Speaker.
The bigger question I see is whether any sitting Speaker has been voted out? Maybe Newt under the excuse for his foolin around?
Aren’t Speakers usually just allowed to not run for Speaker again, to save face? Considering Boner has no face to save, fat chance on him not running again.
Here’s a radical idea.... How about Sarah Palin for speaker?
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