Apparently, it only takes sixteen Republicans to abstain on the January floor vote to keep Boehner from becoming Speaker of the 113th Congress: according to House rules, a candidate for Speaker has to get a majority of the House to get elected.
Yep, that's how Gingrich was ousted in 1998. He would have been able to get a majority of the GOP caucus to support him for another term as Speaker, but the GOP only had a 5 seat majority, and more than 5 Republican members were going to refuse to vote for him for Speaker again.
That's also how Boehner was ousted in 1998.
What? No, I don't think that's correct. Boehner was Conference Chairman at that time, a position that's elected purely by the party caucus, not the House as a whole. IIRC, Watts just beat him straight up within the caucus.
Yeah, my bad. My history recall sucks lately. I seem to remember Boehner losing a committee chair because of the Gingrich ouster, so he knows the history, but clearly he was part of the Gingrich ouster and then got ousted himself for poor midterms.
I guess my point is that Boehner has seen this happen before and has more experience than the Teabaggers. Well, everybody else in the chamber knows how the government works better than the Teabaggers.
The problem with their plan is that yes, 16 Republicans abstaining would kill him as Speaker, but just 1 Democrat voting for him would kill the abstentions. This only gives Obama even more leverage as he can pull the negotiations further to the left by promising #SaveBoehner matching the Republican abstentions with just a handful of Democratic votes for Boehner.
