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WASHINGTON – A review of the aftermath shows House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, did not win re-election as speaker by nearly as comfortable a margin as the mainstream media generally portrayed, and he was actually in great danger of facing a second ballot.
In fact, had 20 missing Democrats been present, Boehner would have won that first ballot by just two votes.
And he is not necessarily out of the woods yet.
Boehner may have won re-election in Tuesday’s vote with the majority of GOP colleagues, but he could be on shaky ground, judging by a look at numbers indicating soft support, a review of how events unfolded and an examination of the rules and history of the House.
Those rules appear to indicate the speaker still could be removed by a simple House resolution.
The numbers
The speaker of the House is elected by a simple majority of the members who vote.
The mainstream media reported Boehner won re-election by a comfortable margin, with 216 votes, a majority of the 408 votes cast.
However, had all the of the House Democrats voted, Boehner would have won by just two votes.
On the day of the speaker vote, a number of Democrats were not present, having attended the funeral of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, D-N.Y.
Twenty Democrats didn’t vote.
Had those 20 Democrats voted, that would have upped the total number of votes cast to 428.
To win a majority of 428 votes, Boehner would have needed 215 votes. Having only received 216 votes, he would have won by two.
In that instance, had just two of all of those Republicans who were reportedly sitting on the fence and afraid to vote for Boehner switched sides, the outcome of the election might have been dramatically different.
One problem for rebellious conservatives was that the challengers to Boehner gave such short notice before Tuesday’s vote, announcing their candidacies just over the weekend.
That gave challengers precious little time to round up votes.
As newly elected Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, explained, “There were no qualified or notable campaigns for speaker within the Republican Party other than John Boehner.”
She added, “Casting a vote for a candidate who has not actively campaigned and does not have the support to be speaker is an indirect vote for Nancy Pelosi, and I will not vote for Nancy Pelosi.”
How events unfolded
After Tuesday’s vote, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who unsuccessfully challenged Boehner for speaker, told “The Sean Hannity Show” that colleagues told him, “I couldn’t vote for you but, listen, Boehner was so anxious to get my vote, I got some promises for some things that are really going to help the country, so you’ve done some good here.'”
When a House member asked Gohmert why he didn’t run against Boehner during the Republican Conference election in November, the Texan replied, “Well, we hoped he’d keep his word. He made the right pledges. And that was before the cromnibus.” (Many conservatives believe passage of the “cromnibus” budget bill violated a Boehner commitment to confront the Obama administration on Obamacare and executive amnesty for illegal immigrants.)
But Gohmert said his colleague replied, “Aw, come on. He’s been breaking promises ever since I’ve been here. That isn’t anything new.”
If Boehner were to alienate enough colleagues by not keeping promises or not sufficiently combating the Obama agenda, it appears he still could be removed with simple majority vote in the House. (That procedure is described in full below.)
That may be evidenced by what was actually a narrow re-election of Boehner as speaker.
Gohmert told Hannity, “We had enough votes, but people that were right there, ready to go, ended up deciding not to vote with us.”
In its account of that exchange, Mediaite’s Matt Wilstein ridiculed that assertion, writing that the comment indicated “literally hundreds of Congress members changed their votes at the last minute.”
However, Gohmert was most likely referring not to the hundreds of votes needed to defeat Boehner but to the dozens of votes needed to force a second ballot, something that hasn’t happened in a House speaker election since 1923. That was considered the critical threshold because conservative challengers to Boehner were hoping a second ballot would unleash an anti-Boehner wave.
As Gohmert said, “It was all about having enough votes to go to conference, where we could get somebody else as speaker.”
Boehner may have good reason to fear that prospect.
According to Gohmert, “[I]t really shook some folks around here, and some of Boehner’s people were really scared they didn’t have the votes.”
Gohemert said members of the speaker’s leadership circle were scrambling for votes by “whipping it hard.”
“That’s when we knew they were really concerned because they were making calls and really putting the squeeze and people to get them to vote for Boehner.”
It wasn’t just promises.
Boehner apparently made good on threats to rebellious colleagues, as evidenced by media reports.
Almost immediately following the vote, Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, who voted for Gohmert, said the speaker had removed him as sponsor of a nuclear energy bill.
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., who voted for Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., said he had been passed up for a subcommittee chairmanship because he didn’t back Boehner.
Additionally, Webster and Rep. Richard Nugent, R-Fla., were removed from the powerful House Rules Committee.
Politico reported dozens of other Republicans could face a backlash over the next few months as House leaders carefully review the list of members who voted against Boehner.
However, it appeared that voters across America would have had their backs, had most GOP lawmakers opposed Boehner and successfully deposed him – and would still do so, if Republicans should rebel in the future.
On Monday, it was reported voters were jamming the House switchboard with callers urging lawmakers to vote against Boehner.
Gohmert backed that up, noting colleagues were “blown away” that so many Americans were calling.
“People were telling me, ‘I can’t believe it. You know, I can’t vote for you, I gotta vote for Boehner, but man, we’ve gotten a thousand calls just 10, 15 minutes ago.’ And others said, ‘We got 850 calls, and none of them were saying vote for Boehner.'”
Additionally, a recent poll found 60 percent of Republican voters want a new speaker.
On top of all that, WND’s “Dump Boehner” campaign has generated more than half-a-million letters urging House members to fire the speaker.
“Dump Boehner” already has generated 560,000 letters – or a stack that will be nearly 19 stories tall on delivery.
All of that overwhelming opposition to the speaker that went unreported by the mainstream media was apparently not lost on Boehner himself.
According to Gohmert a member of the speaker’s inner circle approached him after the vote and said, “Hey, we really want to work together. I mean, people are upset and we want to work with you and get of the things done that are really important to people.”
House rules and history
There may be no precedent for removing a sitting House speaker, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be done.
In fact, it would likely take a simple vote.
Constitutional expert and former Brookings Institute senior staff member Kenneth Gold, director of the Government Affairs Institute at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, has written, “[I]t’s generally believed that a Speaker can be removed, which would be executed by a Member offering a resolution declaring the Office of the Speaker vacant.”
Gold conceded it has never been done and observed, “There is no explicit procedure for removing a Speaker either in the Constitution or in the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 113th (previous) Congress.”
But he finds support for the constitutionality of the removal of a sitting speaker, noting, “The Jefferson Manual, written by Thomas Jefferson when he was Vice President, and used by the House as a supplement to its standing rules, in Section 9 states that ‘A Speaker may be removed at the will of the House and a Speaker pro tempore appointed.'”
Gold wrote, it is possible that clause may have been meant to apply to replacing a speaker due to illness, but he still asserted it is assumed a resolution declaring the office of the speaker vacant could be used to trigger a floor vote to replace the speaker.
There is one historical precedent for stripping a speaker of the House of his power.
In 1910, fellow Republicans rebelled against House Speaker Joe Cannon, R-Ill., and passed a resolution removing the speaker as chairman of the Rules committee, effectively stripping most of his power.
Cannon countered by requesting a vote to remove himself as speaker, but won that vote because Republicans were afraid of the risk a Democrat could replace him.
Follow Garth Kant @DCGarth
