Where is the GOP going?

I’ve written a series of posts about the internal civil war within the GOP. More and more, the GOP DC elites, Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, Cornyn, act in concert with the democrats. The latest fiasco was the debt limit increase.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION Scene from Game of Thrones and John Boehner.Rather than fight the increase and use it to cut spending, as Boehner and others promised last year during the ‘Continuing Resolution’ battles, Boehner, et. al, dropped all opposition and submitted a ‘clean’, that is no spending cuts, no restraints, as Reid demanded.

Conservatives rally against debt ceiling ‘surrender,’ call for Boehner’s head

11:18 PM 02/11/2014, Alexis Levinson, Political Reporter

The House voted Tuesday to raise the debt ceiling with no conditions attached, and conservative groups are calling for Speaker John Boehner’s head.

The vote was 221-201, with just 28 Republicans joining 193 Democrats to vote for it. Speaker Boehner cast a rare vote in favor of the bill.

But the attacks began before the vote even took place, as soon as it was known that Boehner would bring a no-strings-attached debt ceiling hike to the floor.

“A clean debt ceiling is a complete capitulation on the Speaker’s part and demonstrates that he has lost the ability to lead the House of Representatives, let alone his own party. Speaker Boehner has failed in his duty to represent the people and as a result, it is time for him to go… Fire the Speaker,” said Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin in a statement before the vote. The statement linked to a petition to “Fire the Speaker,” and the group’s Twitter account has been tweeting since the vote asking people to call Boehner and tell him to “resign.”

Senate Conservatives Fund had a similar idea.

“John Boehner must be replaced as Speaker of the House,” reads a post on their website from before the vote.

“Instead of fighting for conservative principles, Speaker Boehner has completely surrendered to the Democrats,” the post reads, and the group launched its own petition to “Replace the Speaker.”

Club for Growth lampooned the idea, flagging it as a “key vote” for their rankings of how pro-growth members are.

“When we heard that House leadership was scheduling a clean debt ceiling increase, we thought it was a joke,” wrote Club for Growth Vice President of Government Affairs Andy Roth in an email to House offices before the vote. “But it’s not. Something is very wrong with House leadership, or with the Republican Party. This is not a bill that advocates of limited government should schedule or support.”

For America, another conservative group, also went after the House Republican leadership.

“Republicans have caved again!” reads a post on the group’s Facebook page. “They promised to fight Obama, but they’ve just announced they will raise the debt limit without any conditions … Yet another failure from the GOP and more proof it’s time to dump the leadership!”

The post is illustrated with a photo of Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy.

Freedomworks’ Matt Kibbe dubbed the vote the “Boehner debt hike,” and marked it as a key vote in their score card for members as well.

“Governing with Democratic votes to raise the debt limit with no reforms attached is an all-time low for Speaker Boehner,” Kibbe said in a statement. “Based on reports, the Boehner debt hike spends money we don’t have to increase entitlement spending and grow the debt. In other words, with the money they spend today, they’ll come back and borrow to pay for tomorrow.”

Heritage Action also knocked the bill, urging members to vote against it.

Historically, Boehner does not have a warm and fuzzy relationship with any these groups. In December, Boehner accused outside groups like these — that were criticizing the bipartisan budget deal — of “misleading their followers” and said “they’ve lost all credibility” in the wake of the government shutdown in October.

The GOP is splitting. The latest polls in the Kentucky Senatorial race has McConnell trailing significantly behind his democrat opponent. McConnell will meet a primary opponent, Matt Bevins, a strong conservative with backing from the SCF, Heritage Foundation and numerous grassroots and Tea Party organizations. According to those same polls, Bevins would beat the democrat candidate by a number of points.

It makes sense, to retain the GOP senatorial seat, for McConnell to step down in favor of Matt Bevin. He has refused to do so and apparently would rather lose the seat to the democrats than keep it for the GOP.

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We have similar examples at the state and local levels. The Senatorial Conservative rankings were released over the last weekend. I wrote about it in an earlier post. We have another example of a ‘Pub, Roy Blunt, voting in concert with democrats.

We have more examples within our state legislature. During the veto override session last September, a significant number of so-called ‘Pub Representatives failed to support the veto overrides for bills they had voted for during the earlier regular legislative session. Locally, Donna Pfautsch, Representative for Missouri’s 33rd district, reversed her vote. Her failure to support the MO tax cut bill contributed to the failure to override democrat Governor Nixon’s veto.

When we have ‘Pub legislators supporting the policies of democrats, can we truly call them republicans? All too often, ‘Pubs, instead of opposing democrat lawlessness as exhibited by Nixon and others within Missouri, we have ‘Pubs voting in lock-step supporting the democrats.

That must end.

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