Boehner Tells House Republicans: ‘We All Need To Be Team Players And Support Each Other’

A solid majority of House Republicans — 167 in all — rejected a call for GOP unity from Speaker John Boehner earlier on Tuesday, a sign of his slipping grip on power in the House after he flip-flopped to support President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty by providing funding for it.

“We all need to be team players and support each other,” Boehner told House Republicans, according to a House GOP aide, in regards to his new efforts to pass a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill that doesn’t block Obama’s executive amnesty.

That’s not exactly what even Boehner himself has done, however.

Boehner, through his ex-chief of staff Barry Jackson (who now works as a senior board member for the outside group American Action Network), has close ties to advertisements targeting three House Republicans for their steadfast opposition to any funding for Obama’s executive amnesty. The AAN ad buy, worth $400,000, has television spots running in the districts of Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) and Tim Huelskamp (R-KS).

In an interview with Breitbart News on Tuesday, Huelskamp came out swinging against the decision to fire on members who are supposed to be his own troops.

“If these guys spent half as much time fighting Obama as they do attacking conservatives, maybe we’d win,” Huelskamp said, while noting that AAN is clearly “Boehner’s group” and that the Speaker himself must be personally aware of the attack ads.

They seem to be backfiring in more ways than one, however. The attack ads could be part of the catalyst behind 167 Republicans casting a vote against the DHS funding bill that funds Obama’s executive amnesty—meaning they were in essence casting a vote of no confidence in Boehner’s leadership—forcing Boehner to team with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to get all her Democrats to back the bill so it could pass with Democrat votes.

Not only that, though, but Boehner’s actions seem to have had a counter-effect with even the specific members who have been targeted. Those three members are now heroes against the left and victims of the political establishment’s brutality, giving them a bully pulpit from which to bludgeon Boehner and Obama moving forward.

“Our office has been getting a lot of calls in response to the attack ads — all very supportive of the Congressman,” an aide in one of the three offices who wished not to be identified said in an email.

Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel told Breitbart News that the Speaker doesn’t approve of the ads personally.

“We are forbidden by law from coordinating with outside political groups – but the Speaker does not think these ads are helpful,” Steel said in an email on Tuesday afternoon. “He strongly believes in Ronald Reagan’s ‘11th Commandment.’”

But Boehner’s actions overall on this matter, Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning wrote in a Fox News op-ed, are inexcusable and mean that the Democrats still control Congress despite the previous election.

“Now, we know that Republican leadership never had a plan or even a desire to win,” Manning wrote in a piece where he detailed how Tuesday will be a day that “will live in infamy.”

“We also know that Senator Harry Reid still runs the Senate and Congress as a whole, with the minority imposing their will on the majority in an unprecedented manner,” Manning added.