by Kate Hicks
Dec 22, 2012
As members prepare for the 113th Congress, several have been dissatisfied with Speaker Boehner's conduct: he's been accused of
booting
more conservative members off of major committees, and the abject
failure that is "Plan B" seems to have been the final straw for some.
Breitbart News reports that there's a
plan circulating some offices intended to facilitate the election of a new Speaker of the House come January.
Several conservative House Republican members are contemplating a plan
to unseat Speaker John Boehner from his position on January 3,
Breitbart News has exclusively learned. Staffers have compiled a
detailed action plan that, if executed, could make this a reality.
The circulated plan is a comprehensive multi-step process.
According to the plan as drafted, the first step is to re-establish
the election of the Speaker of the House by secret ballot, rather than
by a public roll call vote. That’s because the members who would oppose
Boehner, if there ended up not being enough votes to achieve their
desired result or if Boehner scared via threat or coaxed via prize some
of the opposition into voting for him, would be sitting ducks for
retaliation in the near future.
As one hill staffer considering this path told Breitbart News, the
members involved in an unsuccessful coup d’etat would be “toast.”
To establish a secret ballot election for Speaker of the House, one
Republican member will need to step forward and introduce a resolution
on the House floor on the morning of January 3, 2013, before any other
business takes place. Those close to this plan are convinced that a
member will step forward and introduce this resolution.
These anonymous staffers note that there is no specific replacement in
mind, but that one would surely emerge if a majority didn’t vote for
Boehner. And, as the article makes clear, due to House rules that a true
majority, and not simply a plurality, must elect the Speaker, Nancy
Pelosi wouldn’t be able to win (unless, of course, a few Republicans
voted for her).
The second step of the circulated plan would require enough GOP
members to band together and vote for somebody other than Boehner as
Speaker. Since Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., has resigned
his position, there will be 434 voting members on January 3. For
someone to win the Speaker election, they’d need to secure 217 votes –
or a majority of everyone voting.
Since there are 233 Republicans heading into the next Congress, only
17 Republicans would be needed to unseat Boehner. The House would
continue having multiple elections throughout the day on January 3 until
it agreed upon a new Speaker.
It's clearly a plan born of extreme frustration with the way things
have run in the House over the past two years, but given the lack of a
clear viable alternative, and the extremely large coalition that would
need to form among Republican members backing that person, at least at
this point it seems unlikely. Boehner, for his part, certainly doesn't
think so. In a post-cliff-vote press conference, he
shrugged off any concern that his fellows would try for his ouster.
“While we may have not been able to get the votes last night to avert
99.81 percent of the tax increases, I don’t think — they weren’t taking
that out on me,” he said at a press conference. Joining him was House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the man who had
been seen as his chief rival, in a show of unity that seemed designed to
quell any talk of a challenge to Mr. Boehner’s speakership.
Of course, it’s possible that the plan is gaining steam behind the
scenes – given the anonymity, there’s not telling how many members are
backing it, and they're certainly trying to keep it a secret from
Boehner himself. Perhaps, come January 3, he'll have to answer to his
perturbed colleagues after all.
