Would any readers of Pileus mourn for a second if Speaker Boehner were ousted?
Charles Stewart at MIT notes in USA Today that such an historic ousting is not likely. Here is Stewart: “So what are the chances of a surprise coup Thursday? ‘Zero,’ said Charles Stewart, a political scientist at MIT and expert on political leadership.”
Yet rumors persist that there are 17 Republican votes to be had against the Speaker.
UPDATE: Towards the end of the vote, looks clear that Boehner will be reelected Speaker. So how will the defectors get punished?
indeed- be careful what you wish for; although boehner is certainly a flawed leader, i don’t see any other candidates in the house that can herd cats.
Yeah, who is a realistic alternative? Cantor? Ryan?
An interesting possibly replacement would be Eric Cantor, who has a strong following in the House and is also much more in line with the Tea Party wing of the Republicans. He also voted against the bill. If anyone were to mount anything like a real challenge to Boehner, my guess is that it would be him.
Yes, but it is always difficult for insider coups since you stand to lose much more than outsiders if you fail and you have to be particularly savvy to pick just the right time to tip the balance.
I’m curious what you thought about Christie’s rant. Isn’t he basically screaming at Republican leaders to spend more money on New Jersey — in other words, to extract more rent from the rest of us? Or is he asking for legitimate spending? Given my namesake and the Texas Seed Bill, I’m not at all convinced that the rest of us ought to pay a dime here.
Christie is behaving like any other politician: When there is “free” money to be had, you take it. New Jersey is way over its skis in spending and debt, and, although he might have slowed the increasing flow of red, he hasn’t been able to stop it. So he’s desperately seeking money from other places. As long as the feds are willing to spend other people’s money, including future generations’ money, he’ll take it.
From CNN: “They had the opportunity to have a $27 [billion] to $30 billion dollar legit relief package, packed it with pork, then dared us not to vote on it,” said Issa. “The speaker has the support of the majority of Republicans that if we’re going to provide relief, we can’t allow it to be doubled with unrelated pork no matter where the relief is.”
Cantor would be an unmitigated disaster- he is an ideologue with few ideas of his own. What leadership has Cantor shown over the past two years except for calling for “spending cuts” and then not coming up for what those cuts actually were. Ryan is marginally better, but not likely to take the job- he does not want to be tripped up by trying to lead the House Republicans.
Erik –
I think you are understating the importance of the House Repubs and of “ideologues” as vehicles for planting a firmer pole against spending and tax increases. Don’t you think that a wishy-washy Washington insider like Boehner is going to get the Pres and the Dems to move less in the Republican direction than someone else? Remember, Cantor would still have a majority in the House.
Eric, I think you underestimate Cantor. He is actually very smart, and surprisingly (at least for a politician) principled. You may remember him during the Obamacare debates as the person who carried the entire actual bill around with him to committee hearings on a hand truck; he actually read the entire thing and cited parts of it, chapter and verse. He called on his colleagues to actually read and debate the bill before signing it. I thought that was pretty impressive.
I think both of you make valid points, but you miss the value of Boehner to Cantor. Cantor is undoubtedly smart, but I do not see him as a leader able to bring some type of consensus to the caucus. He is a good as an intellectual sniper, but I don’t think he would be an effective leader, and the need to herd cats would take away from his other duties.
Eric Cantor? Mr. Israel Firster? Really? What are you people thinking of?
The Republicans, and I am not one, need unity more than anything else if they are to be a truly effective opposition to the Democrat lead Senate and Democrat POTUS. Boehner was re-elected, either affirmatively or as the result of oppositional apathy I do not know, and so it falls to him to make the Republican caucus work more effectively. What Obama did most effectively in the the ‘fiscal cliff’, umm, action was divide and conquer the Republicans. If Boehner is to lead he must ensure that never happens again.