Every America who follows politics agrees that the House of Representatives needs cleaning even though we often disagree on what we mean by that expression. Speaker Boehner should be congratulated for doing the job, at least in terms of four members. First, let’s look at the job he did and try to understand why and how it might effect the fiscal cliff negotiations.
Reps. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan.; Justin Amash, R-Mich.; and David Schweikert, R-Ariz.
Huelskamp was yanked off the budget and agriculture committees; Schweikert was pulled from the financial services panel; and Amash was also booted from the budget committee. A fourth, Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., lost his seat on financial services. All four of these people are radical right wing conservatives. They are Tea Party conservatives. They are new to congress thus are weak when it comes to seniority. For example, Marsh Blackburn is more radical than Jones but has lots of seniority.
So here is the deal; Boehner is afraid of Eric Cantor, a Tea Party radical. Cantor gets his power because he and the other Tea Partiers can vote Boehner out of the speaker position. The number of votes needed to do that has to be more than the number of votes in half of the house republicans. Therefore, the speaker counts votes, finds the vulnerable representatives, removes them from committees hence destroys their chance of doing anything to brag about back home, which is directly related to their re-electability, in other words there future. In addition, it means that Boehner will do the same to others who indicated they might not support him as speaker. It is a threat. Yes, Boehner is cleaning house but he is not doing it for God and Country, he is doing it to protect his job. The more important part is that he is preparing to protect himself from harm when he makes a deal with Obama that is less than favorable for the radical right-wingers—after all, he is a politician
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