Everybody here is acting as if Boehner is the problem - but he’s merely representative of the problem. The reality is that the great majority of House members voted for the bill, and in fact would probably have voted for something even more outrageous and probably would even have been happy to go along with the Dems from the very start.
It’s true that he’s not a good negotiator and obviously not a very effective leader, but the real problem is that the great majority of the House was NOT putting pressure on him to do anything more and probably didn’t even want to go any further.
So it’s not just a matter of changing what is technically the leadership, but changing the mindset of the rest of the House. You’d think that after the 2010 elections, they would have smartened up, but they obviously regarded that as just a temporary aberration and don’t seriously expect that there will be any real challenges to business as usual.
267 voted for, 167 voted against. Sounds like a big difference, right? Not remotely close.
But breaking it down into Repub/Dem, 151 Rs and 16Ds voted against the deal.
I THINK I saw somewhere that 87 Rs voted for it, and the rest were the all but 16 Ds who joined the 151 Rs in voting no.
The massive “FOR” vote was massively DEM.
These numbers tell me Boehner was/is under pressure.
Whether that translates into his loss of the Speakership, we’ll see.
Eric Cantor is not a good replacement. Paul Ryan would be the pick of most, but he voted with Boehner, so that’s a no go.
A challenger from the clear, strong RIGHT should step forward, even if - as Mark Levin has said - they don’t win it.
But he says it must be someone who is not only a strong conservative but who is bright, articulate and passionate.
Only one third of the GOP House members voted for the “cliff deal”.
Over 90% of the Dems voted for it.