Conservative Republicans Should Stop Attacking Boehner and Go after Senate Democrats in November

The passage of the debt limit measure by the US House of Representatives without any attempt to extract offsetting spending cuts comes after House GOP leaders tried for weeks to find an agreement in their caucus to pass a debt limit bill that included Republican agenda items like approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and repeal of parts of Obamacare. But a group of House Republicans simply refuse to vote for any increase in the government's borrowing ceiling. It was this that forced House Speaker John Boehner to ask Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to pass the measure with Democrat votes. Pelosi was only too happy to do it. The bill passed in the House last night, 221 to 201, allows the United States to borrow regularly through March 15, 2015, putting the out-of-control debt ceiling issue off until after the November elections and setting it up for the new Congress to deal with next year. If Republicans take over the Senate, they will insist on linking the debt ceiling to spending cuts, but for now, the issue is being handled the old fashioned way, with the party of the incumbent President being responsible for supplying the votes to pass it but with the minority party not standing in the way. Speaker Boehner told his caucus earlier on Tuesday that he would call up for a vote a clean debt ceiling bill. He had already proved the necessity of a clean bill by his unsuccessful attempts to find any debt ceiling-spending cut combination that the GOP caucus would vote for in sufficient numbers to ensure passage. So, Boehner relied on mostly Democrats to bring the bill over the finish line - 193 Democrats voted for the bill, while just 28 Republicans did the same. Boehner put the best face on his inability to win over his conservative wing, saying, "Understand, it's the President driving up the debt and the President wanting to do nothing about the debt that's occurring, he will not engage in our long term spending problem. And so let his party give him the debt ceiling increase that he wants." His reference to Democratic overspending came just before the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office chief Douglas Elmendorf also warned a Senate committee about the runaway debt : "Such large and growing federal debt could have serious negative consequences, including restraining economic growth in the long term, giving policy makers less flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges, and eventually increasing the risk of a fiscal crisis," he said. On the Senate side, Majority Leader Harry Reid praised Boehner's decision but attacked House conservatives, saying, "I put nothing past the Tea Party-driven Republican Congress." ABC called the vote the end of the “Boehner Rule.” John Boehner once coined that phrase based on this conservative principle : Any increase in the nation’s debt ceiling would be accompanied by an equal dose of spending cuts. The rule has sparked a series of fiscal fights that have often left Capitol Hill frozen in gridlock. But it was set aside as Boehner called the vote last night. “We’ve lost the stomach for brinksmanship,” one Republican lawmaker told ABC News, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the mood and mindset inside the closed-door Republican meeting where Boehner announced his plan. When asked by reporters whether the “Boehner Rule” was dead, the Speaker simply said : “I would hope not. As I’ve said before, this is a lost opportunity.” While the decision by Boehner is an embarrassment on one level, yet another sign that he is unable to guide his rebellious Republican conference, it also is something of a relief. Republicans are eager to keep their election-year focus on criticizing Obamacare, without giving Democrats new ammunition to accuse them of being obstructionists. Vice President Joe Biden, visiting Capitol Hill, said he was pleased Republicans were moving forward. “Look, if a clean bill comes up and it passes, that’s all I care about,” Biden told ABC News, “no matter what the makeup of the votes was." ~~~~~ Dear readers, we will undoubtedly hear a lot about the need to replace John Boehner as Speaker. The Senate Conservatives Fund, which is dedicated to electing “true conservative leaders” and was founded by former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, is now urging its supporters to sign a “Replace the Speaker” petition. “Republicans must know that conservatives expect them to make a change at the top, and we’re not going to give up on this until John Boehner is gone,” the SCF executive director said. “It’s sad that it has come to this but enough is enough. We will never stop the massive spending and debt that are destroying our country if the Republican speaker of the House surrenders to the Democrats and stabs conservatives in the back.” SCF joins For America, Tea Party Patriots and Freedomworks in calling for Mr. Boehner to be removed from the House’s top post. But consider this -- the conservative group that refuses to follow Boehner's lead does not have enough votes to pass any House bill on their own. If they did, the clean bill would never have come to the House floor for a vote. So, we must assume they don't have enough votes to oust John Boehner from the Speakership, either. And that is one of the unspoken reasons for the conservative/tea party effort to replace incumbent GOP House members in the November elections. Those targeted, being labeled as non-conservative, are sure to vote to keep John Boehner in his job as Speaker un January 2015 when the new Congress convenes. What the conservative/tea party House group refuses to ubderstand is that their fight is not with John Boehner, who is a conservative ready to lead their fiscal assault on President Obama's senseless spending. Their fight is with the Senate Democrat majority. Instead to "eating their own children" by attacking GOP House incumbents and risking the loss of their seats to Democrats, the conservative/tea party group ought to be putting every dollar and every argument they can muster into electing a Republican Senate majority in Novenber. They would then have a Congress united against a Democrat President isolated and alone in the White House. Politics is about ideas - about constitutional government and fiscal sanity. But politics is also about tactics because you can have the best ideas ever conceived, but if you are not the majority, you will lose. Jim DeMint has been in politics long enough to know this. He ought to teach it to his followers by example -- elect a Republican Senate in November. The rest will then fall into place.