Upon personally meeting a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives and having an opportunity to ask some questions, one of the first I wanted to ask was how he felt about John Boehner as Speaker. I was delighted to hear him agree with me that Republicans need a stronger Speaker. I think the sentiment is growing.
Mark Levin, on his radio show, makes this a frequent topic. He is disgusted with the Republican leadership.
And I think the message is getting through. I got a call on Saturday from the Republican National Committee asking for a donation. I told the caller I was donating to individual candidates because I didn’t want my money going to establishment Republicans like Dick Lugar and David Dewhurst. He clearly had been coached on how to answer that and replied immediately that the RNC was not the National Republican Senatorial Committee or the National Republican Congressional Committee. That was reassuring, to know that they are getting this flak enough to come up with a programmed response, and that the RNC is willing to put some distance between itself and congressional Republicans.
Look at Mitch McConnell’s wimpy response on repealing Obamacare. On Fox News Sunday, he gave me some hope. Since the Supreme Court had justified Obamacare on the premise that it is a tax, he said that Republicans, if they only gain a simple majority, will be able to repeal it with reconciliation – a practice that treats the bill as a revenue measure which only requires a simple majority – it cannot be filibustered. “Oh, good,” I thought. “This is the silver lining in the Roberts ruling that we’ve been hunting for. It is giving Mitch McConnell the courage to use reconciliation.” But then yesterday, he seemed to walk that back. Maybe he’d been worried about Jack Lew saying that the American people wanted us to put the divisive debate about Obamacare behind us. The Washington Times referred to a report by WHAS-TV in Louisville: “It’s on his to-do list, but U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says the odds are against repealing the health care law championed by President Barack Obama.
“The Kentucky Republican said Monday it’s hard to unravel something of the magnitude of the 2,700-page health care law.”
No, Senator McConnell, the American people want us to put Obamacare behind us. And I’ll tell you what else they want – they want leaders with spine.
I can think of four or five Republican Senators who would make excellent majority leaders – more than that who would be a substantial improvement over McConnell. And there have to be fifty or more members of the House who would do a great job as Speaker and would be a serious improvement over Boehner. What do you say, freshman class of 2012? Maybe Paul Ryan? Michele Bachmann? Steve King? Allen West? Darrell Issa?
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