How can a speaker who can only get about 33% of his party on board for one of the most important votes in this term retain his speakership?
I understand that there will be many “but the GOP is so radical” responses, but assuming that is true, shouldn’t the party nominate a speaker who can wrangle his own membership and negotiate on its behalf? How can Boehner go to Pelosi or Obama and say, “Here is what I’m offering” when he can’t back that up with anything?
Boehner can’t wrangle these people because they don’t want to negotiate. There might be enough of them to ditch Boehner in favor of, say, Cantor, but I’m not sure there are enough of them to form a consistent basis for negotiations. We’ve been watching this mess for a couple of years now.
I will just note that Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarty, the two most likely challengers for the Speakership, voted against the compromise. FWIW.
I see a possibility of a split in the House Republicans and a coalition put together that elects Boehner or Pelosi or someone else the baggers won’t like.
I was just going to mention, I’m not sure exactly how it works. Is it all those in the majority party votes for a leader, or all those in the House? You’re saying its only the majority party that votes?
No - he is advancing a principled view that teh best thing for the county in teh long term requires ain in teh short term and that it is immoral to conitnue to keep delaying that pain, having the size of the problem compound, and imposing an ever heavier burden on someone in hte future to clean things up.
Now - I disagree with teh social and economic analysis that informs those principles, especially given teh fragile current state of global economic markets, but I think demonizing folks who disagree upon a political or economic principle is a bad thing.
I hadn’t read up about this process either, but here’s the deal:
[From House Leadership & Offices, section #2]
If each party nominates one candidate, the candidate nominated by the majority party obviously wins. So the action would be in the Republican caucus. For ‘moderate’ Republicans and Democrats to get together and nominate a candidate, the whole party system would have to break down - and I put moderate in quotes because there aren’t a lot of moderates left at this point.
The parties meet to decide on their “nominees” before the actual voting, so yes. I mean, theoretically the congresscritters can vote across party lines but even protest votes are usually “present” or for another candidate from their own party. I think the only time a significant cross-party vote happened was in the 1850s, and that was because one party had basically dissolved.
[QUOTE=Spiritus Mundi]
No - he is advancing a principled view that teh best thing for the county in teh long term requires ain in teh short term and that it is immoral to conitnue to keep delaying that pain, having the size of the problem compound, and imposing an ever heavier burden on someone in hte future to clean things up.
[/QUOTE]
It’s not that he opposes the plan. It’s that he’s selling out his own Speaker by registering a meaningless protest vote that will do nothing other than endear him to the “nonono” wing of the party.
My understanding: as a matter of parliamentary procedure, teh entire House of Representatives votes for teh Speaker, but teh candidate list is “closed” (at least traditionally) to 2 candidates, one from each party. While nothing prevents a member from voting across party lines, in practice this is unheard of (at least in modern times). So as a practical matter, the majrity party selects who they will put on the ballot, and that person becomes Speaker. So, Republican leaders in the House will determine using their own internal procedures, who to put forth. How support is garnered by individuals in contention is teh very definition of “back room politics”.
Thanks for this information. After reading it I concluded that there’s quite a good chance there will be a different Speaker, and even more likely that there will be quite the cat fight about it. Looking forward to it.
So is your contention that having Boehner in a strong position as Speaker is necessary for teh good of the country? I’m not clear how the above relates to “advancing his own flag at the expense of the country”
The only thing Cantor accomplished by voting against the measure was to make Boehner look bad and make himself look good. He’s not a “principled stand” guy or he wouldn’t be in the House leadership in the first place. I don’t think it matters whether Boehner is a strong speaker or not, but it certainly matters if his adjutant cares more about himself than anything else.
Didn’t some of the opposed Republican leaders actually hold off on voting against the bill until they were sure it had enough votes to pass? It seems to me that some of them might have even voted yes because they understood they couldn’t afford for the bill to go down.
I find myself in a curious position, here. My original point was that saying a political leader was advancing themselves at teh epense of the country, which is borderline treasonous behavior, seemed unnecessarily inflamatory and not particularly relevant to the question raised in the OP. I don’t want to derail this thread any further, but you seem to be saying that it is impossible for a person to be both principled on a political or economic policy and hold a political leadership position.
I disagree, but will drop the matter unless you prefer to continue the discussion in another thread.
More directly to the OP - I do no think Boehner is necessarily finished, but he is weakened. Had the last election not swumg so clearly against the far right in so many ways, he would be toast. But while the “Cantor wing” remains powerful, I think there is also some clear backlash against the extreme by traditional Republican power players. I thnk it is pretty close to a coin flip, now, with Boehner getting some cover from Mitch McConnell and the overwhelming Senate support for the last-minute deal.
But if he does not find a firm place to stand on teh debt ceiling and sequestration votes ~February he migth be finishd before his net erm is really begun.