GOP Rep: Boehner ‘Whining’ in Conference About Tea Party Speaker Race Backlash

On Wednesday’s broadcast of Laura Ingraham’s radio show, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) revealed that there is an internal unhappiness with the Tea Party for pushing members to vote against House Speaker John Boehner for a third term.

According to Huelskamp, one of the sources of this ire is from Boehner himself, who he said was “whining” about his supporters within the House Republican caucus having to face constituents’ phone calls calling for them not to vote for Boehner.

“[I] was in a conference today and the speaker – instead of saying, ‘You know what, I hear your concerns, Tea Party and other conservatives,’ Laura you know what he did — he started attacking other Tea Party groups,” Huelskamp said. “He said, ‘They’re making it tough on my members.’ And he really was whining about all the calls that were coming in. I tell you, if every member voted on what their constituents want, we would have a new speaker today. But that’s not the way it’s run in the establishment in Washington. They don’t want to listen and we saw that yesterday.”

Ingraham asked Huelskamp to clarify what specifically Boehner and other members were upset about, to which Huelskamp identified to be that backlash.

“That was earlier today and he wasn’t whining about the folks that opposed him so much as the Americans who called in and said, ‘You know what? We need new leadership in Washington,’” Huelskamp explained. “I can remember [a specific quote], but he said, ‘My members are getting beat up on and these Tea Party groups,’ he said ‘he was Tea Party before they even existed.’ So he was the Tea Party speaker. But he was whining, not about the fact there was opposition to him, but that Americans had the audacity to call in and demand a new speaker and these groups were generating phone calls. That’s the concern of folks in Washington – not that they had to take on Obama and change the agenda and change this country and take it back from him, but the little people are out there bothering us. ‘Let us do our job.’”

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