Posted on 01/02/2013 5:08:45 PM PST by drewh
I have confirmed with a group of Congressmen that House Speaker John Boehner will not be reelected Speaker tomorrow.
He will either resign or be forced out tomorrow.
Only 17 members are needed to block Speaker Boehner's election tomorrow. A Speaker needs an absolute majority of all votes cast for a specific person.
If no one has a majority, the House is speakerless. I've confirmed these rules with the House Parliamentarian.
She is a very bright, articulate woman. Could care less about her hair and frankly could care even less about Newts two previous marriages. If these are the reasons he wasn’t our nominee then we deserve Obama.
“Clint Eastwood for speaker.”
Or G. Gordon Liddy (as long as we’re dreaming).
Heck, go for broke. Get Mark Levin on the line...
I find it hard to believe that the House cannot get an absolute 2/3 majority for Newt. Does this mean we get a Bob Dole RINO type as speaker instead?
YES!
Why get rid of one socialist to get an even worse one. Besides, Gingrich is too busy crusading for climate change and same-sex marriage.
Agree!!
Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina (R) will be a fine Speaker.
Dear God, Please save us from Eric Cantor, too. Amen.
Why put a Nancy Pelosi minion in charge, why not just put Pelosi in charge. Those of us who remember the 90s remember Gingrich did more than anyone else to destroy conservatism from within
You are lost.
I don’t know who Ron Meyer is, but he is incorrect in stating that no one can get elected Speaker without 218 votes and thus that 16 Republicans voting “present” can keep Boehner from the Speakership. The rules of the House have stated since at least 1913 (the earliest Speaker election analyzed by the Congressional Research Service in its 2011 study) that the election of Speaker requires a majority not of members, but of votes cast *for a person*. Thus, vacancies, abstentions, *and people voting “Present”* will not be included in the denominator. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL30857.pdf
And this isn’t some arcane theory by the CRS; it was exactly what occurred as recently as 1997. That was the year of the attempted “coup” against Newt Gingrich, which fell apart, but around 8-10 Republicans voted “Present” in the Speaker election (plus 2 Republicans voted for RINO Jim Leach, 2 others voted for Republicans who had retired from Congress, and I assume that Newt abstained, as is customary for Speaker candidates). Due to all of those “Present” votes and abstentions, only 213 votes were required to elect a Speaker, and Newt was elected with 216 votes.
The House of Representatives for the 113th Congress will convene with at most 434 members (Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s seat will be vacant). If 16 Republicans vote “Present,” at most 418 votes will be cast for a person for Speaker, meaning that Boehner would need only 210 votes to be elected Speaker. But if 34 Republicans vote “Present,” then Pelosi or some other Democrat could be elected Speaker with the 201 Democrat votes. So voting “Present” for Speaker won’t keep Boehner from being elected Speaker, unless so many Republicans do it that a Democrat gets elected Speaker.
The only way that 16 Republicans can prevent Boehner or a Democrat from becoming Speaker would be if they voted for actual persons, not vote “Present.” And that is a lot more difficult than finding 16 Republicans to vote “Present.”
omg- you’re right!
Pelosi cannot win, and Boner has been GREAT for the democraps... so why not let some of the democrats vote for him!
Then he can ‘repay’ them by purging every remaining conservative from any house committees.
Newt? The guy who recently said we would have to compromise on immigration and gay marriage?
Heck, go for broke. Get Mark Levin on the line...
Talk about bringing down the house! That’s what I’m talking about.
The MARXISTS/SOCIALISTS would have heart attacks. Which at this point, would be fine with me.
good choice , Cain ,West , Bachmann ,Palin
“The Speaker doesnt have to be a current member necessarily.... (according to the constitution)”
That interpretation assumes that when the Framers placed the words “the House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker” in Article I of the U.S. Constitution they were not basing the speakership on the Speaker of the House of Commons of the British Parliament, which most definitely *did* need to be filled by a Member of the House of Commons. The reason that they didn’t write “the House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker *from among their members*” was because it was deemed to be self-evident, since the Speaker is the leader of the House and the leader must come from within the group—had the Framers intended to allow the House to elect a Speaker that was not a member of the body, such a clear departure from parliamentary precedent would have been specifically noted, and they likely would have selected a title other than Speaker. The one instance in the U.S. Constitution where the presiding officer would not be a member of the body he presided was when the Vice President is made, ex officio, the President of the Senate, but he was specifically designated as such in Article I, and the fact that the VP is not a member of the Senate was probably the reason why they didn’t baptize the presiding officer of the Senate as “the Speaker of the Senate.”
No one believes that the Chief Justice of the United States can be someone other than a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and, until a few years ago (when a couple of Republicans upset at Newt Gingrich voted for retired Republicans for Speaker) no one other than a sitting Representative had even received a vote for Speaker. I think the theory of the non-member of the House serving as Speaker is an interesting exercise in constitutional analysis, as is the theory that the Governor of New York could be in the line of succession to the presidency (a governor is, after all, an “officer”), but having a non-member serve as Speaker ultimately would be a distortion of the Framers’ original intent.
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