John Boehner has been Speaker of the House since January 2011, after the Republicans won the majority in the 2010 mid-terms elections. Mr. Boehner seems like a good and decent man, but good and decent men aren't always up to every task put before them. The current Speaker has shown an inability to negotiate with Barack Obama and achieve outcomes which are anything other than complete humiliations for Republicans and disastrous for the American people. I've said before that Barack Obama is a street fighter and the Republicans approach him as if he is a chess player. They continue to make the mistake that this President has the best intentions for the country as founded and refuse to admit, even after four years of incontrovertible evidence, that he wants to remake the country into something 180 degrees out of phase with the Founders' intentions.
That is why I think the Republicans should immediately call to remove John Boehner as Speaker and elect instead Newt Gingrich. Crazy you say? Well, technically it can be done. The Constitution says that the House of Representatives shall elect a Speaker, but it does not say that that person has to be from their ranks. The Speaker has always been a member of the House because it is natural for the members to vote for one of their own. But there is nothing Constitutionally from preventing the majority in the House from voting for someone like Newt, who holds no elected office.Of course this brilliant, if I do say so myself, stroke of strategy would require courage, thinking outside the box and a unified Republican caucus.
Once elected as Speaker of the House, Mr. Gingrich could make the President aware in no uncertain terms that there is a new sheriff in town. Gingrich is smart, tenacious and not easily intimidated, all qualities in short supply in the current Speaker. Newt Gingrich also has the added benefit of being a little unpredictable, which is a good quality to possess when negotiating with a street fighter like Barack Obama. John Boehner's steady, predictable nature is an advantage in some situations, but in the hard-knuckle contest of political negotiations, one needs to unbalance his opponent with unpredictability. Newt's track record of accomplishments in this arena is staggering. He was able to move a big government liberal like Bill Clinton to accept a balanced budget, welfare reform and many other policies which President Clinton now brags about, but which he fought tooth and nail at the time.
But alas, my fantasy will never materialize because of a Republican party that is too mired in its recent failed past to reach back further to a past when they exhibited political success and in the process did what was right for the country. I sure would like to see the look on Barack Obama's face when he had to sit across the table from someone who he couldn't intimidate or back down with his smuggish thuggish brand of politics. Now that would be a street fight I'd pay to see.
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