House Speaker John Boehner – who repeatedly has compromised with Barack Obama to allow the president the agenda he wants, including just after the 2014 midterms when the GOP was handed by voters a bigger majority in the U.S. House and control of the U.S. Senate – revealed a surprise on Wednesday.
"I was the tea party before there was a tea party," he said.
That certainly would come as a revelation to those who have organized a "Dump Boehner Now" letter writing campaign that allows voters to reach every single Republican House member with hard copy letters with FedEx delivery guaranteed.
Five-hundred, seventy-five thousand of the letters – a stack about 20 stories tall – already have been dispatched to the halls of Congress.
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The letter points out that the House had every power it needed – the power of the purse – to halt Obama's plans to give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens already in the country and to at least delay and chip away at Obamacare after the huge GOP sweep of election results in November.
The campaign letter pointedly notes that it is because of Boehner's compromises with Obama that his funding for Obamacare and amnesty continues into 2015.
The letters tell GOP House members that they will not be able to succeed in their battles against Obama's agenda with a leader like Boehner, who readily reaches compromises.
In the interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, at about the 11:45 mark, Boehner is asked whether he'll be able to get things done in Congress.
He says he'll be around for awhile, and his goal is to have the components of government working together.
About the tea party, he said, "I understand their concerns, their frustrations. … I was the tea party before there was a tea party."
He said he wants to find a way to work with Obama for the remaining two years of his presidency, and hold him accountable.
He said he's convinced Americans want Congress and the president to find common ground, and he thinks the president is listening to what Americans want as well.
On Twitter, one response to Boehner's statement was, "Huh? Hitting the sauce again, John?"
But Joseph Farah, WND founder and campaign organizer, said the opposition to Boehner is based specifically on the Obamacare and amnesty issues – issues on which voters were loud during the 2014 midterms.
Their message was that they didn't particularly like either program, and didn't want them continued.
The letter explains to members of the U.S. House that two issues have "prompted Americans to turn in droves to the Republican Party in November 2014 – Barack Obama's blatantly unconstitutional executive action to provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, and the deliberately deceptive restructuring of America's health-care system through Obamacare, which threatens to unravel the greatest health delivery system in the world."
Pointing out that Republicans before the election "solemnly vowed to STOP this lame-duck president," the letter states: "Now you have the power, right and duty to stop him.
"But it won't happen with John Boehner leading you. You know this to be true. The trillion-dollar budget deal is just the latest proof that Boehner is not capable of leading the House to victory during this critical period."
The campaign allows people to send letters, with their own names and addresses via FedEx, all for the one price of $29.95, to each of the House GOP members.
The letter campaign has earned the support of the founder of Tea Party Nation, one of the organizations that helped rouse the American electorate in 2010 and give the GOP control of the U.S. House.
"Absolutely, I want people storming the halls of Congress," Judson Phillips told WND. "Melting the phone lines and anything else."
"So, I love [WND CEO Joseph Farah's] letter writing idea."
Phillips had gone to the commentary pages of the Washington Times to say why he thinks Boehner should be replaced.
"A month after its incredible victory, the GOP squandered its mandate, surrendering to the Democrats," he wrote. "The GOP-led House of Representatives did not proclaim its mandate and hold off on major decisions until the Republican majority in the Senate was sworn in. No, they went to the GOP position of preemptive surrender and gave President Obama and the Democrats almost everything they wanted.
"Despite the pleas and demands from the base, the GOP did nothing to stop Mr. Obama’s executive amnesty. They even rewarded left-wing billionaires who had spent millions to keep the Democrats in power by extending so-called 'Green Energy' subsidies," he wrote. "The architect of the Republican surrender was House Speaker John Boehner."
JOIN THE DON'T BE YELLOW, DUMP BOEHNER NOW CAMPAIGN.
Boehner fought off a rebellion at the beginning of January when he was faced with a couple dozen members of his own party who wouldn't support him in his re-election bid to be House speaker. He won anyway, but sources report he was alarmed by the extent of the dissatisfaction with his work.
In addition to the hundreds of thousands of letters, the Washington Examiner reported: "There were hundreds of them, jamming the phone lines of the district and Capitol offices of dozens of House GOP lawmakers. The callers were not angry about legislation. Nor were they asking for help with a local matter. They were demanding their representative vote against Boehner ... in his bid to win election to a third term as speaker."
And there's a move by a couple of dozen House members, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to create a new caucus that would urge bold, conservative actions on immigration, Obamacare and other issues.
Jordan told Gannett: "If you set small goals, you're not likely to accomplish big things. Our party had better understand what is at stake. We had better get it."
The report said the idea "is to leverage the Republican sweep in November's elections into conservative victories in Congress – and to serve as a check on the GOP leadership if they move too far toward the middle" to "compromise with the White House and congressional Democrats."