If there are at least 217 House members ready to pass a clean CR...

[BlueDemKev]

...can't the majority of the House force a vote on it without the Speaker's permission? Rep. Cleaver is on PoliticsNation right now saying there are at least 17 House members who are ready and willing to pass a clean CR. Add those to the 200 Democrats would be enough to get a clean CR through.

[lostincalifornia]

1. Doesn't the hassert rule prevent that?

[Tx4obama]

3. The Hastert Rule is NOT a real rule. It is just a 'principle' that Boehner uses to judge if he...

... if he will bring a bill to the House floor or not.

History of The Hastert Rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_rule

[Warpy]

2. Boner is blocking that vote.

Personally, I think they need to lock that man away from his booze supply to work on the bill. He has an alcoholic seizure or DTs, they cart him off to the hospital and bring a clean bill to the floor in his absence. He cracks before he gets to that point, they get a clean bill with his permission.

This is 100% the Weeping Cheeto's fault. He's the one pandering to the teabagger idiots and trying to force rule of the minority upon the majority.

[Agschmid]

7. Yah the whole drinking thing is a bit OTT.

Last edited Thu Oct 3, 2013, 09:21 AM - Edit history (1)

Look I get it... He is the enemy and we don't agree with him, but you think we could use tactics besides calling him a drunk to make our point.

That is all.

[Warpy]

9. Dude, they've shut down the government

If the stories about him are at all true (and they usually are), then the reasonable wing of his party needs to use whatever they've got to get him to stop blocking that vote.

[AlinPA]

4. No. But the Washington Post suggested a "discharge petition" (link below). IMO,it won't work because

it would be impossible to get enough sane republicans together (20) and there are at least 9 "Democrats" who are voting with Boehner and all the craziness with trying to stop the ACA.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/02/democrats-can-use-this-one-weird-trick-to-end-the-government-shutdown/

[Thor_MN]

5. Time to rendition the terrorist to Gitmo for a week.

Then if the acting speaker does the same thing, they get a free Caribbean vacation as well. Lather, rinse, repeat.

[ShadowLiberal]

6. I don't think quite enough Republicans have endorsed a clean CR yet

Last I heard only 15 or 16 house Republicans had publicly called on Boehner to pass a clean CR, we need 17 to get a majority. It would probably be good to get at least 5 extra votes to with how around 9 house democrats apparently voted with the GOP on some of their poison bill stuff.

[Hippo_Tron]

8. There aren't 17 who are willing to defy the leadership... yet

It's an expectation in the Gingrich era of congress that the Speaker uses control of the floor to advance the party's ideology, even if a majority of the House feels otherwise. For example, back when Nancy Pelosi was speaker, if she had allowed an anti-abortion bill to come to the floor because a majority composed of blue dogs and Republicans wanted it, we would've raised hell. It's her obligation as the leader of the pro-choice party to use her power to advance a pro-choice agenda. And if blue dogs had joined Republicans in signing a discharge petition, we would've demanded that every single one of them face a primary challenge.

But as just about everyone has pointed out, this is really an unprecedented situation and Republicans have really bitten off more than they can chew. Their caucus is going to fragment and it's going to fragment in a way where you can't really primary all of the dissenters.