The rebellion is underway. After Rep. Louie Gohmert announced his intention to actually challenge John Boehner for the speakership, the far-right fringe Congressmen began making announcements refusing to vote for Boehner.
Steve King cannot bear to vote for anyone who makes deals and won't repeal Obamacare. Because respect for the U.S. Constitution. No, really.
At each crisis point of conflict between President Obama and Congress, we have been admonished by our Speaker to take the high road, to pick our battles, to wait for a better time to fight on better ground. As a product of hook, crook, and legislative shenanigan, ObamaCare was passed. The American voters elected 87 Freshmen Republicans to the House of Representatives, every one pledged to repeal ObamaCare. Then, our soon to be Speaker told us we would not and could not use the Constitutional “power of the purse” to block implementation of ObamaCare. By order of the Speaker, my amendment to do so was placed on ice, citing “procedural reasons.”
But we had John Boehner’s statement to rely upon, speaking of ObamaCare on Nov 5, 2010:
“Well, there’s a lot of tricks up our sleeves in terms of how we can dent this, kick it, slow it down to make sure it never happens. And trust me, I’m going to make sure this healthcare bill never ever, ever is implemented.”
By October of 2013, Congress had caved in to the demands of the president and fully funded the operations of ObamaCare. Just last month, defunding ObamaCare did not get raised as a serious debate point as the “CROmnibus” bill fully funded ObamaCare operations until September 30, 2015. Without dents or slowdowns, and without a change in our Speaker, ObamaCare is on its way to becoming permanently fully funded, even with a new Republican majority in the Senate. The substantive changes made to ObamaCare were almost exclusively a result of President Obama assuming Article I authority, mostly without a peep out of Republican Leadership.
They'll lose this challenge, I think. But it's still an effective way to remind John Boehner that they're keeping score and won't cooperate, whether the issue is the debt ceiling, tax reform, or the budget.
Will they get more than the 29 votes they rounded up last time? Stay tuned.
