washingtonpost/ While determining House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) ideology since becoming Speaker is difficult — Speakers of the House almost never vote on legislation — a look back at his last year as Minority Leader in 2010 is telling. In 2010, Boehner received a 100 percent conservative score from the American Conservative Union (and had a 94 percent lifetime score). That same year Boehner had a 100 percent rating from the conservative Club for Growth (and a 83 percent lifetime rating.) So, describing Boehner as something short of “conservative” doesn’t fit. But, that then raises another question: What do we call the 45 people who voted against Boehner on at least half of the seven critical votes flagged by the Washington Post so far this year? The tendency is to describe this group as “tea party conservatives”. But, that label seems inexact. We’ve already detailed the problem with using the word “conservative” to contrast this group with the Boehners and Cantors of the world. And, the word “tea party” was always something of a misnomer driven by the word “party”; the number of groups — and belief systems — that fall under the “tea party” label are so diverse as to render the term almost meaningless. Look at the group of 45. It includes Members with a decided libertarian streak (Michigan’s Justin Amash, Georgia’s Paul Broun), freshmen Members (Oklahoma’s Jim Bridenstine, Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry) and veterans (Tennessee’s John Duncan, North Carolina’s Walter Jones Jr.) There’s no obvious ideological/geographical/experiential tie that binds all 45 of these people together. What then binds the group? To our mind, it’s a sort of anti-establishment mentality. That is, whatever their leadership wants, they don’t want. For some, it’s ideological. For others, it’s political. For still others, it’s personal. All of which brings us to this simple question: What do we call this group: https://twitter/victortejano
Posted on: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 18:49:24 +0000
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