Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) Issues Statement On His John Boehner Vote

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representative Mick Mulvaney released the following statement:

“There was an attempt to oust John Boehner as Speaker of the House today. I didn’t participate in it. That may make some people back home angry. I understand that, but I’ve got some experience with coup attempts against the Speaker, and what I learned two years ago factored heavily in my decision today not to join the mutiny.

First, I learned two years ago that people lie about how they are going to vote. And you cannot go into this kind of fight with people you do not trust. We walked onto the floor two years ago with signed pledges – handwritten promises – from more than enough people to deny Boehner his job. But when it came time to vote, almost half of those people changed their minds – including some of those who voted against Boehner today. Fool me once, shame on you … Today was even worse: there were never enough votes to oust Boehner to begin with. On top of that, some people who had publicly said in the past that they wouldn’t vote for Boehner did just that. This was an effort driven as much by talk radio as by a thoughtful and principled effort to make a change. It was poorly considered and poorly executed, and I learned first-hand that is no way to fight a battle. This coup today was bound to fail. And in fact, it failed worse than I expected, falling 11 votes short of deposing the Speaker. At least two years ago we only failed by six.

I also learned that the Floor of the House is the wrong place to have this battle. The hard truth is that we had an election for Speaker in November – just among Republicans. THAT was the time to fight. But not a single person ran against Boehner. Not one. If they had, we could’ve had a secret ballot to find out what the true level of opposition to John Boehner was. In fact, we could’ve done that as late as Monday night, on a vote of “no confidence” in the Speaker. But that didn’t happen … and at least one of the supposed challengers to Boehner today didn’t even go to the meeting last night. That told me a lot.

Some people wrote me encouraging me to vote for Louie Gohmert. I like Louie, but let’s be clear: Louie Gohmert was – is – never ever going to be Speaker of the House. I respect his passion, but he isn’t a credible candidate. That was proved today by the fact that he got three votes, despite all the national media attention he managed to grab. My colleague who got the most anti-Boehner votes was Daniel Webster of Florida who got 12 votes. I like Daniel. He is a nice guy, and a good thinker … but his lifetime Heritage Action score is 60 percent (by comparison, mine is 91 percent). And this was supposed to be the savior of the conservative movement? Would the House really have been more conservative if he had won?

The truth is, there was no conservative who could beat John Boehner. Period. People can ignore that, or they can wish it away, but that is reality.

Some people tried to argue that voting against Boehner would give conservatives leverage, or somehow force him to lead in a more conservative fashion, even if the coup attempt failed. All I can say to that is that the exact opposite happened two years ago: conservatives were marginalized, and Boehner was even freer to work with moderates and Democrats. My guess is that the exact same thing will happen again now. And I fail to see how that helps anything that conservatives know needs to be done in Washington.

I understand people’s frustration and anger over what is happening in Washington. And I also acknowledge that John Boehner may be partly to blame. But this was a fool’s errand. I am all for fighting, but I am more interested in fighting and winning than I am fighting an unwinnable battle.

Finally, the most troubling accusation I have heard regarding the Boehner vote is that I have “sold out” my conservative principles. All I can say is this: take a look at my voting record. It is one of the most conservative in Congress. And I was joined today by the likes of Jim Jordan, Raul Labrador, Trey Gowdy, Mark Sanford, Trent Franks, Tom McClintock, Matt Salmon, Tom Price, Sam Johnson, and Jeb Hensarling. If I “sold out” then I did so joined by some of the most tried and tested conservative voices in Washington.

I can say with 100 percent confidence that I have done exactly what I said I would do when I came to Washington: fight to cut spending, stop bad legislation, work to repeal Obamacare, and hold the President accountable for his actions. That will never change, and neither will I.”

From your source: Page 2:

The table does not take into account the number of vacancies existing in the House at the time of the election; it therefore cannot show whether or not any Speaker may have been elected lacking a majority of the then qualified membership of the House.2 If no candidate obtains the requisite majority, the roll call is repeated.

The precedent has always been a majority of those present who are qualified. Thus, the four instances cited cannot be shown to have resulted in a the election of a Speaker where those voting present affected the outcome.

Thus the number of those voting present has always been so small as to be insignificant, and no way were 40 people going to vote present.

The precedent is clear, from your source on page one, that the Speaker is elected upon reaching a majority of those present and voting.

“The precedent has always been a majority of those present who are qualified.”

That’s what you claim, but you already have been proven wrong, not just by the Congressional Research Service (who has studied this issue a little more closely than you have), but by the results of the 1997 Speaker election. You really should stop digging.

How do I know that Gingrich was elected by less than a “majority of those present who are qualified”? Because I’ve seen the vote tally for the Speaker election held on January 7, 1997, in which Gingrich was elected with only 216 votes. Here it is: http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/01/07/gingrich.vote/vote.html

Apart from 216 votes for Gingrich, there were 205 votes for Gephardt and 4 votes for other persons, and 6 members voted “Present,” which adds up to 431. That means that, for Gingrich’s 216 to be a “majority of those present who are qualified,” then none of the other four House members—and there were four others, as there were no vacancies at the time—could have been present in the House that day. Well, Frank Tejeda almost certainly was too ill to attend (he died three weeks later), and it is possible that Julia Carson and Sam Johnson were absent that day (frankly, I don’t know if that was the case), but there definitely was at least one additional Representative present and qualified to vote in the House that day. I know this, because he was on camera almost constantly, and gave a speech right after the vote. His name? Newt Gingrich.

So, Newt Gingrich did not receive the vote of a “majority of those present who are qualified,” and nobody in Congress—not the 206 Democrats, not the 9 or 10 Republicans that refused to vote for Gingrich—raised an objection. Do you still think that “[t]he precedent has always been a majority of those present who are qualified”? More to the point, if there was *any doubt* regarding whether Gingrich merely needed to receive votes from a majority of members voting for a person, or whether he needed to meet the requirements that you (and others, by the way) believed to be applicable, don’t you think that Gingrich would have just voted for himself and thus received a majority of votes from members present and qualified to vote? The fact that Gingrich didn’t vote when his name was called a second time, and thus ended up with 216 votes, speaks more as to what the precedent is than anything that the Congressional Research Service could have found.

So, in sum, the precedent is the one that the Congressional Research Service described, not the one that you and many others assumed.

“Thus the number of those voting present has always been so small as to be insignificant, and no way were 40 people going to vote present.”

Well, you’re correct that there had never been an election with 40 members voting “Present,” but it also is true that there had never been an election with 30+ members voting for some random backbencher that declared his candidacy the day before the vote. What Mia Love was saying is that she was not going to vote for some random, last-minute candidate without even a plan of action as Speaker, and that voting Present could result in Pelosi being elected Speaker, which, if 40 other members viewed the election in the same way that Love did, certainly could have been the case. (And believe me, if there were enough Republicans voting “Present” to give Pelosi a shot at being elected Speaker over Boahner, those Democrats that voted for persons other than Pelosi would have changed their votes to Pelosi in a heartbeat.)

“The precedent is clear, from your source on page one, that the Speaker is elected upon reaching a majority of those present and voting.”

Present and voting *for a person*, yes. Stop digging, you’re up to your eyes in filth.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.