Tea Party Patriots: Primary Challengers in 2012 Will Be More Frequent -- and More Successful
Speaker of the House John Boehner needs “to go” and be replaced by a “Tea Party Speaker of the House,” Tea Party Nation head Judson Phillips said in a blog post Wednesday.
Criticizing Boehner’s new debt plan that the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday came up short in spending cuts, Phillips said Boehner (R-Ohio) “has no real interest in solving the problems this country faces. … He worships at the altar of massive spending.”
Facing an Aug. 2 deadline of a possible default unless a deal can be reached, he added: “John Boehner simply wishes to be the manager in chief of the welfare state. His vision of the GOP and the Speakership involves golfing, drinking and not rocking the boat.”
“We need a Tea Party Speaker of the House. We need a Speaker with a vision for the future,” Phillips said, urging members to call the representatives and get Boehner out.
Also on Wednesday, Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin cited a new internal poll of their members that found more than 80 percent were not satisfied with Boehner and the rest of the House Republican leadership, and nearly three-quarters would like a new Speaker of the House.
According to the Hill, Martin said, “Maybe we should see about getting a different Speaker right away.”
In an interview with the Daily Beast, Martin’s co-founder Mark Meckler called Boehner’s plan “an embarrassment” and gave his performance so far as Speaker a “D.”
“He proposes $1.4 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. Legally, no Congress can bind a future Congress. Anything he promises about what future Congresses will do, they simply can’t make that promise. In the real world, we call that a lie.”
Meckler said lawmakers, including Boehner, should steel themselves for another Tea Party uprising at the polls based on what happens this week:
I can tell you that there are certainly a lot of thoughts out in the Tea Party network across the country about primary-ing people, including freshmen who seem to be going off the rails so early. This week in Ohio, 51 local Tea Party groups wrote a letter to Boehner telling him not to cave on the debt limit. In his own state, he faces significant opposition from a vast majority of the Tea Partiers who are against what he is doing in regard to the debt limit.
“If you want to raise the debt ceiling, prove to us you can make some cuts,” Meckler said to U.S. News and World Report. “Get real. They need to act like adults.”
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