GOP leader ‘lost the confidence of his own party’

As Congress gets ready to convene, a new poll shows a full 60 percent of Republican voters want Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, removed from his position as House speaker.

Boehner has lost the confidence of his own party voters, according to the telephone survey conducted Dec. 26-30 by pollster Pat Caddell on behalf of People’s Poll.

The national poll reveals that only 25 percent of GOP voters would vote to keep Boehner.

The official speaker’s election is scheduled for Jan. 6.

Asked if they believed Boehner has been ineffective at opposing Obama’s agenda, a full 64 percent of voters agreed.

“[N]o respected party leader has polled this low among his own party’s voters unless he was embroiled in a major personal scandal,” wrote the Conservative Review.

“With 60% of Republican voters desiring a more conservative Speaker, what does this mean for John Boehner next Tuesday – when members of the House will cast votes for the next Speaker? And how can Boehner continue to lead the opposition to President Obama when he has lost the confidence of his own party?”

As WND reported, the idea of Republicans in the U.S. House not having Boehner as speaker come next week is catching on in the media, too.

Fox News reported on Tuesday about North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones’ comments before Christmas that there was a “small group, and we – about 16, 18 – and we’re hoping to have a name of a sitting member of Congress that we can call out their name.”

Only hours earlier, the Daily Caller had cited the same local radio interview, which was reported by Buzzfeed at the time.

But WND had reported on Dec. 19 on Jones’ comments, as part of the publicity over the new DON’T BE YELLOW, DUMP BOEHNER NOW CAMPAIGN, which encourages constituents to let all 247 GOP members of the House majority know they need to pick another speaker for the coming Congress.

It’s because of Boehner’s decision not to fight Barack Obama’s amnesty and Obamacare, both of which now are funded through 2015, even though the GOP will hold the majority in both the House and the Senate – a stunning victory handed to the party by voters – starting next week.

BizPacReview notes that there’s been talk of Boehner’s removal before, but there’s been no action.

The report points out now there would need to be only 30 conservative GOP members denying Boehner their votes for him to face removal.

“Boehner spokesman Michael Steel indicated that the speaker is not concerned by the challenge,” the report said. “‘Rep. Boehner was selected as the House Republican Conference’s choice for speaker last month,’ Steel wrote in an email, ‘and he expects to be elected by the whole House next week.’

“Perhaps he shouldn’t be so confident,” the report said.

The DUMP BOEHNER campaign already has lined up more than half-a-million letters that are scheduled for delivery to GOP members of the House as soon as members convene next week.

And it’s 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 Monday. “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.”

It was 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. “2014 is almost over and 2015 is almost here. The first order of business for the House of Representatives in 2015 is to elect a new Speaker of the House.

“It cannot be John Boehner.”

Actually, there are more than 510,000 letters that already have been put into the pipeline for delivery. They would make up a stack nearly 167 feet tall.

On Twitter, the hashtags #BoehnerMustGo and #DumpBoehner have been surging, and other commentators, while not adopting the specific Don’t be Yellow, Dump Boehner Now! campaign, agree with the goal.

At the American Thinker blog, Layne Hansen wrote: “It is time to stop thinking of John Boehner and the rest of the Republican congressional leadership as being cowardly and recognize them for what they are: part of The Ruling Class that believes it has the right to tell the rest of us how to live.

“The current GOP leadership has got to go; this has ceased to be an arguable point. We cannot count on these people to do what is right. Conservatives did not give them majorities in both chambers for them to keep playing the same game,” he wrote.

And at RedState.com, Editor Erick Erickson also delivered a “no-other-options” message.

“House conservatives must summon the courage to oppose Boehner’s nomination on the floor in January. It is a moral imperative. You cannot consistently complain about leadership’s many failures – and the treachery involved with a speaker fresh off a successful wave election conspiring with President Obama to fund amnesty and enjoy a celebratory phone call in the aftermath – and then vote for him to continue in this role. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, that is the definition of insanity, and it is enabled by a vote for Rep. John Boehner,” he wrote.

Critics of Boehner’s actions are responding to the “Don’t Be Yellow: Dump Boehner Campaign” from WND founder Joseph Farah for voters to let the majority members know their thoughts on the issues of amnesty and Obamacare, which both were funded into 2015 in a massive $1.1 trillion spending bill agreed to by Boehner.

Farah said he expects, based on early reaction, to generate millions of letters in time for delivery when the new Congress opens its session this month.

“It’s clear from the viral nature of this campaign that millions of Americans, mostly Republicans, by the way, would like to put coal in Boehner’s stocking this year. And they’d like him to accept the gift as just another member of the House of Representatives rather than as its leader,” Farah said.

The innovative campaign that allows anyone to send a form letter on yellow paper to every Republican member of the House was organized quickly in response to growing anger and frustration from GOP voters. They felt betrayed by Boehner and his leadership team over what Farah characterizes as “his capitulation to Obamacare and the unconstitutional amnesty executive action, which were both fully funded by House Republicans who were voted into office to do just the opposite.”

“While the news cycle has forgotten about Boehner’s betrayal of Republican voters in November, the grass-roots electorate has not,” said Farah. Americans, he said, “are angry enough at the Republican establishment to put their money where their mouth is – investing in this unusual lobbying effort to wake up House members as to the state of their leadership crisis.

“Will Republican House members respond in January? At the very least, they won’t be able to ignore the deluge of mail that awaits them,” he said.

“You can order your letters sent today, and they will be ready for delivery when the new Congress reconvenes. It would be great to see thousands or, better yet, tens of thousands flooding in that first week. That will make an impression that cannot be ignored by Republican members of the House,” he said.

“I’m excited. Now it’s up to you. I’ve already ordered my letters. I’ve even secured the domain names DumpBoehnerCampaign.com and DumpBoehnerNow.com for social media dissemination. Tell your friends,” he wrote.

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.”

Farah noted that the launch of the program rivals the historic “Pink Slip Campaign” in 2010 that generated some 9.5 million letters to Congress.

“Americans are angry about Boehner’s betrayal of the voters who gave him a bigger majority in the House and Republicans control of the Senate. This could prove to be Boehner’s undoing,” he said.

http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/poll-60-of-republicans-want-boehner-out/