Say ‘No’ to Boehner

A growing number of House Republicans say they won’t support John Boehner for Speaker. One of the most influential, Congressman Steve King of Iowa, has observed that he can’t swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and then vote for a man who has been enabling President Obama to shred it.

The question is: How can any legislator, after taking the same oath, then elect as House Speaker a man who contributed to presidential lawlessness as Boehner did in the lame duck session alone, to say nothing of his sorry record since first gaining that post in 2011?

Particularly damning was Boehner’s conduct during the final days of the 113th Congress when he facilitated Obama’s trampling of the separation of powers by eliminating the one practical check left in our constitutional system of “checks and balances”: the power of the purse. The so-called CROmnibus the Speaker rammed through the House, relying on essential support from Democrats, gave the President all the money he needs through the end of the fiscal year to fund Obamacare, to empty Guantanamo Bay, to normalize relations with Cuba, to negotiate a disastrous deal with Iran and otherwise to continue “fundamentally transforming America” in objectionable ways.

The Speaker even surrendered on “Obamnesty” – the President’s outrageous abuse of his executive authority to confer legal residence status on millions of illegal aliens, an action that Boehner himself had denounced.

Speaker Boehner deliberately denied the new Congress, which will be seated tomorrow, the opportunity to block such travesties by denying the funding required to execute them. In the name of “avoiding a government shutdown,” he ensured it would be open for more abuses by an increasingly imperial President.

Americans clearly yearn for an effective opposition to Obama’s anti-constitutional transformation of our country. They gave Republicans a historic majority in the House of Representatives and control of the Senate to stop it and to enhance our security.

John Boehner deserves to be stripped of his Speakership for ignoring that mandate in the lame duck session. And members of the Republican caucus are on notice: They will lose theirs in 2016 if they, too, ignore the will of the people.