The Don’t be Yellow, Dump Boehner Now! campaign, which enables citizens to let all 246 GOP members of the House majority know of their opposition to the House speaker, is getting a boost from a flood of telephone calls has rattled leadership, and one member of the House has openly complained that Boehner simply doesn’t have the required skills to lead.
Politico reported the open opposition to Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is coming from Rep. Richard Nugent, R-Fla.
He was one of the dozens of House members who voted against Boehner’s campaign for the speaker’s post, which faced historic opposition.
Nugent voted for fellow Floridian Daniel Webster for speaker, and Boehner responded immediately by kicking both off the House Rules Committee, Politico reported.
The move appeared to make the conflict worse.
Nugent said: “As I said to him privately this week, I don’t believe that John Boehner is the best man for the job. This may surprise some people (including the speaker) but it has far more to do with his leadership abilities than it does with his conservatism.
“What I mean by that is that if you can’t lead and you can’t deliver, then your own personal political philosophy is pretty much irrelevant. I’ve gone into far more detail about this criticism with him privately than I will here, but suffice it to say that there have been far too many occasions over the last four years where the House has been ineffective, and America just can’t wait any longer. America needs vision, a sense of purpose and an ability to follow through. We aren’t getting those things.”
Meanwhile, the Washington Examiner reported telephone calls opposing Boehner had rattled the House leadership.
“There were hundreds of them, jamming the phone lines of the district and Capitol offices of dozens of House GOP lawmakers,” the report said. “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.”
“We’ve never been lobbied quite like that,” House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, told the Examiner.
The Examiner, citing people in the room at the time, said Boehner was so agitated by the phone calls that he raised the issue to his rank and file in a private meeting Wednesday morning. Boehner was defensive, according to witnesses, telling GOP lawmakers he has long espoused the tea party principles that the callers accused him of abandoning.
The Dump Boehner campaign already has generated 565,000 letters to the GOP members of the U.S. House – a stack closing in on 20 stories tall.
Joseph Farah, WND founder and campaign organizer, said the opposition is largely because of two issues – Obamacare and amnesty. Republicans in the U.S. House before Christmas, under Boehner’s leadership, allowed funding for both programs to continue into 2015.
The 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,” Judson Phillips told WND. “I want people storming the halls of Congress. Melting the phone lines and anything else.
“So, I love [WND CEO Joseph Farah’s] letter writing idea.”
In a commentary in the Washington Times, Phillips explained 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.”
Despite Boehner’s earlier reliance on the tea party, as soon as he was in office, he ignored the movement, Phillips wrote.
“Mr. Boehner made the obligatory statements about cutting spending and reducing Obamacare. Yet time after time, when the occasion called for him to stand and fight, he chose surrender,” he wrote.
JOIN THE DON’T BE YELLOW, DUMP BOEHNER NOW CAMPAIGN.
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.
