A Tea Party in the House GOP Conference?

A very interesting post from www.hughhewitt.com about the GOP and the debt ceiling. This follows this post about the June 13, 2011 GOP debate. This follows this post about the House GOP's communication problem and this article about  the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book HERE!


A Tea Party in the House GOP Conference?

By: Hugh Hewitt

.Leadership challenges are neither anticipated nor welcome among House Republicans. This much is clear from reading the rules that the House Republican Conference adopted late last year.

No organization with elected leadership can completely insure against revolt from within. Under Rule 5, the conference chairman -- Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas -- can call a meeting, but a meeting may also be requested by 20 percent of the members. Once assembled, two-thirds can vote to suspend the rules, at which point anything goes.



The very first rule of the conference governs the procedures of expulsion. The power to expel implies all the lesser powers including the power to suspend or remove from leadership. It isn't written anywhere, but coups are occasionally accomplished under Roberts' Rules of Order.



Given that there are 240 Republicans, it would take 161 to change the direction of the leadership by changing any member of the leadership -- speaker, leader or whip -- or any key rule of the conference.



Eighty-seven of the Republicans are freshmen, almost wholly untethered to House GOP tradition. Many are in precarious electoral positions as redistricting changes their electoral maps and groups like Tea Party Patriots keep close watch.



Then there is the Republican Study Group led by the very competent and direct Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. With 175 members, the RSC can provide the forum from which rebellion can be organized and alliances with non-RSC members explored.



A far more radical move still could occur if as few as 25 Republicans sought to return the gavel to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for a few months as a means of sweeping aside a GOP leadership gone off the rails. Some would argue that honest and clever politics demand that a tax-and-spend Congress is best run by the party that believes in taxing and spending.



None of this need happen. But what certainly won't happen is quiet acceptance of any "deal" that either raises taxes or cuts defense or increases the debt limit without significant domestic cuts and real budget reform.



The GOP won in November 2010, and its grassroots and the armies of Tea Party activists will not forgive a third stand-down. The first came when the conference promoted the old guard everywhere. The second came with the collapse in the first spending showdown.



Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., have been nearly invisible before their core public constituencies. The speaker's appearance on "The Sean Hannity Show" a week ago was noteworthy only for its rarity and for the fact that even as the speaker forswore tax increases, secret negotiations were under way on "revenue enhancements." Imagine Winston Churchill checking in every six months, and then only for a quarter-hour of parsed words.



The House GOP's uber-insider game has cheered the Manhattan-Beltway media elite and fattened the wallets of the K Street insiders who profit from secrecy and small changes to dense print unread by the conference until voting occurs.



But it is provoking a strong reaction that threatens the majority in November 2012 and the leadership even earlier.



Last November's midterm election wasn't a vote for secrecy and "trust us, we know what we are doing" politics. The apparent arrogance and transparent indifference to the party's base on the part of its leadership has already done immense damage, and another surrender would be disastrous.



Boehner could have been and still might be a great speaker, and for many Congresses.



Leader Cantor and Minority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., might have built an impressive message machine, and they might yet trouble themselves to try.



But as the endgame nears on the most important decisions of 2011, the betting is that the House GOP leadership will fold again and the fabled "Pledge to America" torn up a second time. Beyond that, "There be dragons."



Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at http://www.hughhewitt.com/.







Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/07/tea-party-house-gop-conference#ixzz1RnwD6i7m