HOUSE GOP REVOLT GROWS: House rebels warn of blowback for Boehner. Matt Fuller over at Roll Call reports on the intensifying revolt by House Freedom Caucus members against Speaker John Boehner:
The House Freedom Caucus has a secret it wants to share with Democrats.
“If the Democrats were to file a motion to vacate the chair and were to vote for that motion unanimously, there probably are 218 votes for it to succeed,” one member of the House Freedom Caucus told CQ Roll Call Tuesday night, as he exited an meeting in the basement of Tortilla Coast.
If that’s true, Democrats could certainly use a vote to remove SpeakerJohn A. Boehner as leverage in any number of upcoming battles: the Export-Import Bank, a highway bill, all sorts of spending measures. But absent any real talk from Democrats, the official response from Boehner’s communications director, Kevin Smith, was simply to dismiss CQ Roll Call’s reporter. . . .
The HFC looks ready for war, as does GOP leadership and more moderate Republicans who are sick and tired of conservatives voting against the team — and that could signal more retaliation to come from both sides.
Rep. Jim Jordan, the HFC chairman, and Raúl R. Labrador, one of the founding members of the secretive conservative group, had plenty to say to CQ Roll Call Wednesday about leadership’s recent moves against members who voted against the rule for Trade Promotion Authority.
“The reason this is happening is pretty clear,” Labrador said of Meadows’ demotion and the dismissal of other HFC members from the whip team. “The leadership is afraid.”
Labrador said GOP leaders sense their influence slipping, as 34 Republicans defied Boehner and others on the TPA rule. “And they know that that 34 is really not 34,” Labrador said. “They know that that number is really much larger.”
I admire these Freedom Caucus members for standing on their principles. It would be in the best interests of Speaker Boehner to find a way to welcome and work with these GOP members rather than treating them like the enemy. His inability to do this evinces a failure of leadership. Boehner seems more interested in working with President Obama these days than his own party.
RELATED: Boehner doles out new GOP punishment. According to The Hill, The latest victim of Boehner retribution is Ken Buck (R-CO), who “could be stripped of his title as GOP freshman class president on Thursday morning.”
Buck told reporters a freshman colleague approached him on Tuesday night and gave him a choice: Resign or get ousted by his peers. When Buck refused to step down, his colleague issued a threat: “Well, then we’re going to call a meeting.”
Later that evening, the chief of staff to Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.), the freshman liaison to leadership, sent out an email asking for freshman members to gather at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.
In a brief interview, Walters declined to disclose exactly what the meeting would be about. But in a statement, she said, “a majority of the freshman class has expressed concerns I share regarding the leadership of our class president.”
Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) joked that he’s “still got the record for being kicked off two committees.” House GOP leaders removed him from the Budget and Agriculture panels in 2012 as payback for repeatedly bucking the party line.
He accused the GOP leadership of having misplaced priorities.
“Leaders unite, they don’t divide. That’s been the Republican concern about President Barack Obama, that he’s a divider. And we have our leadership doing the same thing,” he said.
Exactly.