Disgruntled House conservatives said they have garnered the support of a “growing” number of GOP lawmakers who will vote with them Tuesday against re-electing John Boehner as speaker of the House.
But with 29 votes needed to block Boehner from a third term as speaker, few Republican dissidents are promising they will succeed.
Many remain quite hopeful, however.
“We’ve got ten as of right now, and there will be more by tomorrow,” Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., told the Washington Examiner before boarding a flight back to D.C. on Monday. “We’ve got people that say they’d be happy to join with us. The momentum is growing.”
Yoho and Rep Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, have announced they will both run as alternative choices for lawmakers who decide to vote against Boehner on Tuesday.
The vote will take place when the House convenes for the 114th Congress at noon.
The two lawmakers are among a faction conservatives who are fed up with Boehner, many of them over past spending battles and in particular the speedy passage of a $1.1 trillion spending bill in December that few had a chance to thoroughly review.
“We need a new direction, new leadership for the country,” Yoho said.
But the percolating enthusiasm isn’t likely to result in an end to Boehner career as speaker.
Only a handful of Republican lawmakers have publicly pledged a vote against Boehner. Much of the support the dissidents tout has been promised privately by lawmakers who said they would vote for someone other than Boehner in the unlikely event he is rejected on the first ballot.
“If there were no C-SPAN cameras, I’ve talked to enough people to know there are at least 50 people who would vote for somebody other than the speaker, if they knew it would succeed,” Rep. Tom Massie of Kentucky said after exiting a closed-door GOP meeting Monday night. “But you’ve got a chicken-or-the-egg problem, obviously, so a lot of members right now are on the fence.”
House Republicans in November voted privately and by acclamation to re-elect Boehner to a third term.
Massie suggested they were coerced into silent approval of Boehner out of fear they would lose critical committee assignments if they objected.
But now they have a new chance to oppose him, because the election of speaker also requires a recorded vote on the opening day of Congress from every member, including Democrats.
Boehner will need a majority of all House members to select him, which means he can only lose 28 lawmakers from his own party.
So far, only about 10 members say they’ll vote against Boehner, including Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, a frequent thorn in the side of the leadership, particularly on immigration reform and spending.
“It’s a growing number,” King said when asked about the fledgling movement to oust Boehner.
Republican leaders, meanwhile, carried out housekeeping matters on Monday with barely a mention of the developing opposition to Boehner.
They met privately Monday evening to discuss a resolution to set the House rules for the 114th Congress.
As he walked into a basement meeting room in the Capitol, Boehner declined to comment about his GOP opposition.
“Rep. Boehner was selected as the House Republican Conference’s choice for speaker in November, and he expects to be elected by the whole House this week,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told the Examiner.
While he’ll likely win, a poor showing for Boehner could be embarrassing for the GOP because it would highlight the internal divide and would suggest Boehner lacks robust support from the party.
In 2012, a dozen Republicans voted against him, and he was re-elected by a mere two-vote margin.
But Boehner this year will have the advantage of cooperative new members, many of them elected with the help of millions of dollars he raised for GOP candidates.
Many of the new members “are overwhelmingly pro-Boehner,” Doug Heye, a former top GOP aide who is now a strategist, told the Examiner. “He campaigned for a whole lot of them.”
One exception is Rep.-elect Dave Brat of Virginia, who defeated former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a spring primary.
“We are at a crucial turning point in our country’s history,” Brat said on Twitter. “Speaker Boehner will not have my support for re-election.”
Some conservatives who plan to vote for Boehner said a failed movement to oust him could damage the power of the far-right faction to influence legislation.
“It might make leadership stronger,” Rep. John Fleming, R-La., told the Examiner. “You’ve proven that the speaker is a lot stronger than you are.”
The effort could cripple individual members as well if the leadership decides to punish them for disobedience.
Two years ago, the GOP stripped committee assignments from four House lawmakers who frequently opposed the leadership.
Other opponents kept their assignments, including Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who voted against Boehner in 2012.
When asked whether he would do so again on Tuesday, Labrador declined to answer.
“I have no comment right now,” Labrador told the Examiner.
