Saturday, December 22, 2012

Boehner has the option of graciously resigning the Speakership and saving himself from having to deal with the annoying reps who gave him the Speaker job in the first place. If not, House members have a 'Plan B'

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12/21/12, "House Republicans Circulate Plan to Oust Boehner from Speakership," Breitbart, Matthew Boyle

"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.

On January 3, the House of Representatives will convene for the first order of business for the 113th Congress. Normally, the first order of business is for the House to elect a Speaker....

Those who are considering this path forward to unseat Boehner know that Boehner and other establishment Republicans can’t legitimately oppose the concept of a secret ballot election for a leader of a political body.

Why’s that? In a 2009 op-ed Boehner himself wrote for U.S. News and World Report, the then House Minority Leader bashed unions for their failure to employ secret ballot elections to protect those voting. Boehner’s op-ed was an attack on the Democrats’ Employee Free Choice Act, also known as “card check” – legislation that would have hurt the sacred concept of elections so badly that, in Boehner’s own words, “it would leave them [workers voting in union elections] open to coercion and intimidation.”

Card check legislation would have made unionization elections public – meaning everybody involved would know whether employees voted in favor of or against unionization. Boehner called such elections “undemocratic” because even “all 535 members of the United States Congress hold their offices thanks to a secret ballot.”

Boehner’s op-ed helped kill the Democratic effort for card check, as he warned that some who have “spoken passionately in favor of secret-ballot elections” have done so “only when it serves their interests.” Those hill staffers who drafted this plan note in their planning documents that a secret ballot against Boehner “is likely the ONLY WAY the Speaker can be ousted,” and find it ironic that the election for House Speaker isn’t done by secret ballot right now."...via Free Republic


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