GOP's 'Pledge to America' smashed?
WND
New questions are being raised about whether the GOP leadership in the U.S. House broke its “Pledge to America” just as a “Don’t Be Yellow: Dump Boehner Now” letter campaign to members of Congress is surging.
The campaign allows people to send a letter to each of the 247 GOP members in the U.S. House calling on them to replace Speaker John Boehner.
As of Friday, more than 525,000 letters – a pile some 17 stories tall – is set to be delivered to the GOP members when the House convenes in the new year. It’s the only plan so far to apply pressure to House GOP members to pick new leadership.
It was S.A. Miller in the Washington Times who raised the question whether the GOP’s pledge, issued in 2010, had been broken.
The writer concluded that if you count three hours as a day, perhaps it wasn’t. Or maybe it was anyway.
“Republicans won the House in 2010 with their ‘Pledge to America’ vowing a more transparent legislative process, but they broke many of those rules in this month’s end-of-year push to pass spending bills and a massive package of land deals,” the article said.
The 2010 promise had committed Boehner and fellow House Republicans to “providing ample time for lawmakers to read bills” and not cramming measures into must-pass bills “to sneak them through.”
“But the $1.1 trillion spending bill, spanning 1,600 pages of legislative text and another 1,200 pages of explanation, was passed in just 48 hours. About one-quarter of the pages in the annual defense policy bill had nothing to do with defense and instead were devoted to establishing 250,000 acres of new national park sites and land swaps, most in Western states,” the report said.
Matthew Rumsey of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington told the newspaper the House mostly follows its pledge, but when the pressure was on, members of Congress threw “all those things out the window.”
A spokesman for Boehner noted that the promise was to make legislation available for three days, and the $1.1 spending bill was “available all or part of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.”
But the report noted Boehner originally said he would not bring a bill to the House floor if it hadn’t been posted online “for at least 72 hours.”
Said the Times, “Mr. Boehner’s office insisted they adhered to the three-day rule despite posting the bill at about 9 p.m. on a Tuesday and having colleagues vote on it 48 hours later, at about 9 p.m. Thursday. It would have been only 41 hours, but a rebellion among House Democrats pushed the vote back by seven hours.”
The report continued, “They hit the three-day mark by counting the three hours Tuesday night as one day.”
The campaign to send letters to GOP members of the House already has passed 525,000, and urges the majority to replace Boehner as speaker.
The momentum is growing quickly.
On Twitter, the hashtags #BoehnerMustGo and #DumpBoehner were surging, and other commentators, while not adopting the specific “JOIN THE DON’T BE YELLOW, DUMP BOEHNER NOW CAMPAIGN,” strategy, agree with the goal.
At the American Thinker blog, editorialist Layne Hansen wrote: “It is time to stop thinking of John Boehner and the rest of the Republican congressional leadership as being cowardly and recognize them for what they are: part of The Ruling Class that believes it has the right to tell the rest of us how to live.
“The current GOP leadership has got to go; this has ceased to be an arguable point.”
And at RedState.com, editor Erick Erickson also delivered a “no-other-options” message.
JOIN THE DON’T BE YELLOW, DUMP BOEHNER NOW CAMPAIGN.
“House conservatives must summon the courage to oppose Boehner’s nomination on the floor in January. It is a moral imperative. You cannot consistently complain about leadership’s many failures – and the treachery involved with a speaker fresh off a successful wave election conspiring with President Obama to fund amnesty and enjoy a celebratory phone call in the aftermath – and then vote for him to continue in this role. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, that is the definition of insanity, and it is enabled by a vote for Rep. John Boehner,” he wrote.
Comments by WND readers also show a high level of frustration with Washington and some confidence that eventually there will be a resolution.
“Notademocrat” said: “Time to clean house down there, purge the Republican Party of all RINOS and send them packing with the Whigs of old. They are part of the past, not part of the future. We need a lean, mean, constitutional Republican machine to take back America from the most evil, duplicitous, reprehensible regime in U.S. history. Repeal Obamacare, abolish IRS and replace it with a simple quarterly fla[t] tax of 14 percent for all income over $2,500 per quarter, no deductions and no need for annual return. Gone … DOE, DOA, EPA, HHS, CDC to start.”
Some had little confidence that change actually would happen, with James DeHart commenting: “It is all about power, and do not expect Boehner to fade into oblivion. They will have to tear the gavel from his hand.”
But another said it only takes about 30 Republican representatives to turn conservative, and all of a sudden Boehner could be looking at defeat.
Paul Brown said, “We have to get rid of Boehner because he has given in to Osama (sic) to (sic) many times and has given away the farm, so to speak.”
Critics of Boehner’s actions are responding to the “Don’t Be Yellow: Dump Boehner Campaign” from WND founder Joseph Farah for voters to let the majority members know their thoughts on the issues of amnesty and Obamacare, which both were funded into 2015 in a massive $1.1 trillion spending bill agreed to by Boehner.
Farah said he expects, based on early reaction, to generate millions of letters in time for delivery when the new Congress opens its session early next month.
“It’s not the Christmas present John Boehner was hoping to receive,” said Farah. “It’s clear from the viral nature of this campaign that millions of Americans, mostly Republicans, by the way, would like to put coal in Boehner’s stocking this year. And they’d like him to accept the gift as just another member of the House of Representatives rather than as its leader.”
The innovative campaign that allows anyone to send a form letter on yellow paper to every Republican member of the House was organized quickly in response to growing anger and frustration from GOP voters. They felt betrayed by Boehner and his leadership team over what Farah characterizes as “his capitulation to Obamacare and the unconstitutional amnesty executive action, which were both fully funded by House Republicans who were voted into office to do just the opposite.”
“While the news cycle has forgotten about Boehner’s betrayal of Republican voters in November, the grass-roots electorate has not,” said Farah. Americans, he said, “are angry enough at the Republican establishment to put their money where their mouth is – investing in this unusual lobbying effort to wake up House members as to the state of their leadership crisis.
“Will Republican House members respond in January? At the very least, they won’t be able to ignore the deluge of mail that awaits them,” he said.
JOIN THE DON’T BE YELLOW, DUMP BOEHNER NOW CAMPAIGN.
“You can order your letters sent today, and they will be ready for delivery when the new Congress reconvenes in January. It would be great to see thousands or, better yet, tens of thousands flooding in that first week. That will make an impression that cannot be ignored by Republican members of the House,” he said.
“I’m excited. Now it’s up to you. I’ve already ordered my letters. I’ve even secured the domain names DumpBoehnerCampaign.com and DumpBoehnerNow.com for social media dissemination. Tell your friends,” he wrote.
The letter explains to members of the U.S. House that two issues have “prompted Americans to turn in droves to the Republican Party in November 2014 – Barack Obama’s blatantly unconstitutional executive action to provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, and the deliberately deceptive restructuring of America’s health-care system through Obamacare, which threatens to unravel the greatest health delivery system in the world.”
Pointing out that Republicans before the election “solemnly vowed to STOP this lame-duck president,” the letter states: “Now you have the power, right and duty to stop him.
“But it won’t happen with John Boehner leading you. You know this to be true. The trillion-dollar budget deal is just the latest proof that Boehner is not capable of leading the House to victory during this critical period.”
Farah noted that the launch of the program rivals the historic “Pink Slip Campaign” in 2010 that generated some 9.5 million letters to Congress.
“Americans are angry about Boehner’s betrayal of the voters who gave him a bigger majority in the House and Republicans control of the Senate. This could prove to be Boehner’s undoing,” he said.
The campaign allows people to send letters, with their own names and addresses via FedEx, all for the one price of $29.95, to each of the House GOP members.
Farah said, “From previous campaigns we know this approach prompts members to talk about the boxes of letters that are coming into their offices each day. And that’s exactly what we want to do with the DUMP BOEHNER CAMPAIGN – a grass-roots lobbying effort that can channel your outrage into effective and meaningful action.”
He said what can be guaranteed is that members “will see, hear and feel your participation in it.”
“We saw the same thing in 2010,” recalled Farah. “People were angry then. They may be angrier now. It is as if elections have no consequences when Republicans vote.”
A sampling of just how upset people are has been posted online, with abundant promises of “I’m in,” and “Do it.”
For interviews with WND CEO Joseph Farah, email to media@WND.com.
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