I am a big fan of Mark Levin, listen to his radio show regularly, and his opinions and analysis carry a great deal of weight with me. So I have been disappointed that he hasn’t seemed to see through John Boehner, appearing to attribute Boehner’s disappointing performance to timidity. But what Mark Levin said last night helped me understand what he has been saying on the air.
A clarifying point in understanding the Speaker is his refusal to set up a select committee to investigate the Benghazi scandal. If he truly wanted to get to the bottom of that scandal, a select committee is really the only way to do it. Otherwise we have a splintered investigation by a collection of different congressional committees by members of congress who have many distractions, whose primary focus is to produce legislation, and they appear partisan. There are questioning limitations of standing or regular committees, and a select committee can be given more authority. Democrats know their advantages and used select committees to investigate Watergate and Iran-Contra.
A petition calling for the appointing of a select committee has been signed by 178 of the 234 House Republicans (that’s over 75%). And these members of Congress have recently been joined by families of the victims of the Benghazi attack, who want answers that they haven’t yet gotten. There is simply no rational, honest reason that can be imagined for Boehner to block this, and so we are left to imagine irrational and dishonest reasons.
I had wondered why Mark Levin didn’t seem to get it. Last night, however, he hinted strongly that he does. He talked about his blocking this investigation and said flatly that he simply didn’t feel he should voice his true opinion on the air. OK, Mark, I get it, and I think I see that you get it, too.
Later in the program, Mark dropped another bombshell on the behavior of the Republican leadership in the House. As you may know, the House yesterday sent to the Senate another omnibus spending bill for a little over a trillion dollars, and the Senate just passed it earlier this evening. Curiously missing from this Boehner-generated bill were three provisions that had been under discussion that many feel would have been fairly easy to push through over the objections of some Democrats:
1. A provision insuring the protection of those who under Obamacare are forced to pay for contraceptives, but who object to that for religious reasons.
2. A provision to prevent the implementation of the regulations against 501c4 groups – Tea Party groups, among others – from certain political activities including issues ads, which they are free to do now. The IRS is about to release new regulations to muzzle this political speech.
3. Elimination of cuts to pensions of military personnel.
Mark Levin said that he had a reliable source from the House of Representatives that informed him that Boehner’s excuse is that the White House had put pressure on him to leave out the first two provisions and he claimed that insisting on that would have led to a government shutdown. I don’t believe that for a minute. It’s difficult to imagine that Democrats would have shut down the government over the insisting of Republicans on protecting first amendment rights of religion and free political speech. I wrote in an earlier piece that Boehner’s going through the motions of a government shutdown was designed primarily to give himself cover for ever after buckling to any such threats by Democrats.
Furthermore, I don’t think it required much pressure to get Boehner to let the IRS go after Tea Party groups. He himself, along with Senator Mitch McConnell, are at war in their own way with the Tea Party, as they are a threat to their leadership.
No, I am convinced that the honorable Speaker is corrupt. I re-iterate my suggestion for getting rid of Boehner: the Tea Party should endorse Boehner’s Democrat opponent in the general election, and threaten to do the same for any successor who takes the same antagonistic stance toward them. Harsh medicine? It’s only turnabout for what Boehner has done by withholding any Republican support for threatened conservatives like Michele Bachmann, which he did in 2012. Her seat was almost lost to a Democrat, because of the lack of support from any national Republicans. And a senate seat in Indiana WAS lost in 2012 from the undercutting of candidate Mourdock by establishment Republicans. Plus, I think sacrificing a House seat is a fitting way to handle a corrupt leader.
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