Replacing Boehner (and McConnell)

"A political party is not a fraternal order."~ Former Governor Ronald Reagan to the New York Times, December 15, 1976

While conservative growth appears to be blossoming at the state level in many instances, nearly the opposite could be said of Washington's movement. And at the center of that dysfunction lies not only the Democratic stronghold of statists and other assorted reprobates, but also the feckless, enabling Republican leadership that's in dire need of replacing. Both Peter Ferrara yesterday and Jeffrey Lord today make compelling comments on the topic...

I'd not be quite so generous in characterizing Boehner (or McConnell) in the praiseworthy manner that Peter Ferrara's piece exudes (it's a little much); however, when he cuts to the reason why both must go, I'm in complete agreement. First, Boehner:

Boehner is no match for Obama on the national stage. He cannot press the economic arguments articulately. He does not have a compelling personality. Obama is running circles around Boehner with outrageous falsehoods, and Boehner cannot raise a peep to challenge him. Boehner has managed to allow Obama to turn the Bush middle class tax cuts, passed by a Republican majority Congress over 10 years ago, into the Obama middle class tax cuts, supposedly opposed by the House majority Republicans.

Reagan-era Democrat Speaker Tip O'Neill used to say Reagan's budgets were dead on arrival. He used to counter Reagan proposals by saying they just could not get through the House. After the Reagan landslide reelection of 1984, O'Neill responded that the people had elected a Democrat House majority too, and they had as much right to pursue their policies in the House as Reagan had to pursue his policies as President. And O'Neill had a personality that was easily dismissive of questioners.

But from Boehner, nothing like any of that.

And of McConnell:

New blood is needed as Senate Republican Minority Leader as well. Mitch McConnell is also a good man with a conservative record. He is supposed to be a wicked good parliamentarian. I haven't seen anything come of that.

The problem is he has the personality and appearance of an undertaker. Alfred Hitchcock would be more compelling. While the Senate Minority Leader has to be one of the 45 remaining Senate Republicans, we have much better options there. How about Marco Rubio? How about Rand Paul? Senate Republicans can make history by choosing highly articulate freshman Ted Cruz. These gentlemen cantalk, they have rock star personalities and demeanor. They are all in the ring to win the fight.

Of course, Ferrara recognizes an additional problem that plagues the GOP leadership: "a national news media that voluntarily behaves in serving the ruling Democrat regime like the old Soviet media was forced to under compulsion."

The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, these are shamefully dishonest institutions. They are not remotely practicing journalism. They are political activists posing as journalists. And this is no longer a contention over which reasonable people can differ.

However, he recognizes that once upon a time, a stronger Speaker, Newt Gingrich, had the ability to dominate the narrative and get his message through. Boehner lacks that completely.

But Ferrara says the biggest reason Boehner must be replaced as Speaker is found in the Constitution:

As Jeff Lord reminded us a month ago, the Speaker of the House does not have to be an elected member of the House. Anyone can serve as Speaker!!!

Think about the possibilities and the opportunities that creates. Republicans can pick the most articulate, knowledgeable, lucid leader possible to fire volleys back at Obama and the Democrats.

That is what is needed now most of all. An articulate Republican who can take on Obama and his dishonest, false narratives. About the rich, the budget, spending, taxes and debt. About energy and the environment. About the Obama record, and the longest trail of broken promises in world history.

Steve Forbes could be named Speaker of the House. Or Larry Kudlow. Or Steve Moore. Or Paul Gigot. Or Grover Norquist. Or Rush Limbaugh. Or Sean Hannity. Or Mark Levin. Someone who can talk, explain, tutor, and at last who knows what he is talking about. How about R. Emmett Tyrrell? Hell, they could even bring Gingrich back.

Ferrara concludes his piece with a strategy for tackling an Obama-controlled Big Government if the GOP could muster the courage to replace the current leadership:

Thus newly led into battle, our new leaders can inform President Obama that his idea of granting him authority to raise the debt limit as he pleases is dead on arrival, and not to be discussed anymore. They can emphasize that last point to the Marxist infiltrator Washington press corps too, through the haze of the bong smoke any time those hippies in suits gather.

The House can then pass a bill making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, and send everyone home subject to recall when the Senate acts. The new leaders then go on national tour to explain to a very retrogressive nation today that the next step according to the law books, as can be read in the civics books for those who can still read, is for the Democrat Senate to act on the House passed bill, and then for the differences to be ironed out in Conference. President Obama, we will call you when we are ready for you, to sign the bill that the Congress of the United States has passed.

Yes, I bolded and purposefully increased the font size on that last sentence! Onto Lord's comments...

Jeffrey Lord's tact is a bit more brutally honest than Ferrara's (similar to my own characterizations of the Speaker). He begins by taking us down a comparative examination of Boehner's relatively short, but jagged path to a familiar road the party's traveled before...

Here we go again. The pattern is uncanny.

First comes the pledge. Then the breaking of the pledge. Then retribution against those who protest the breaking of the pledge and refuse to go along. Followed inevitably by the political symmetry of a conservative base, tsumami-like backlash that politically drowns the original pledge-breakers. Leaving behind a massive Hurricane Sandy-style wreckage of once-promising political careers. All of this coupled with a complete lack of strategic planning.

The last time this happened -- when President George H.W. Bush famously broke his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge -- Bush wound up not only targeting fellow Republicans for lack of personal loyalty, his decision to break principle also did in Republican House candidates in the 1990 elections. Two years later Bush himself managed to go from a president with a 90% popularity rating after the Gulf War to winning an appalling 37% of the vote in his disastrous 1992 re-election campaign, losing to Bill Clinton.

Has Speaker Boehner learned anything from this? Apparently not.

Moving through this expansive piece, in which similarly disastrous events of the party's 1990 experience are detailed, Lord concludes that there is hope...but only with new leadership...

By changing course, having a well thought-out strategy -- and replacing Speaker Boehner with someone knowledgeable in both conservative principle as well as how to articulate that principle -- disaster is avoidable. And yes, an outsider as Speaker could not help but electrify a party whose energy seems to have drained since the November election.

The impending Boehner-led GOP disaster of today is as avoidable now as was the disaster that was the Bush 41 era. The Bush 41 presidency imploded -- and severely damaged the House GOP as well -- because of stubbornness. Because what Ronald Reagan once called the Party of the Fraternal Order -- the GOP Establishment -- defiantly refused to stick to conservative principle, much less articulate it. Then -- as now -- the issue at hand was the economy. And, just as with John Boehner today, President Bush 41 was as nice a guy as one could imagine. But both Bush and Boehner share the fatal error of mistaking loyalty to a person -- themselves as President and Speaker -- for loyalty to principle.

Just as targets of the Bush White House became their own team -- Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, Ed Rollins and other Reaganites -- so too now the Boehner House leadership is targeting dissenting conservatives like GOP House members Tim Huelskamp, Justin Amash, Walter Jones, and David Schweikert.

What is unspooling in front of the nation's eyes this Christmas holiday season is nothing less than what in the world of movies is called a "remake."

The Bush 41 presidency moves to the House of Representatives. Starring House Speaker George H. W. Bush.

Are there 16 House Republicans who have the political will to save the House GOP from its own Speaker? Who have the courage to make sure a bad moment in the nation and the GOP's history is not repeated? We shall see.

We certainly shall.

Just know that there is still time for new, better leadership.