BOEHNER'S BOSS: SPEAKER DEMINT

[DonViejo]

Boehner’s sorry reality: GOP’s true leader is Jim DeMint

The former senator isn't just the head of the right's premier think tank -- he's now running the Republican Party

BY ELIAS ISQUITH

Barely more than 20 minutes — that’s how long it took Jim DeMint to kill John Boehner’s best laid plans.

The Speaker of the House had spent all of Tuesday stitching together a bill to fund the government, raise the debt ceiling and strip Congressional staffers of their health insurance subsidies. It was supposed to be a bill to prove that the House GOP would not go down without a fight. That it would not be a rubber stamp. That it would be giving and never receiving orders — not from Harry Reid, not from the liberal media, and certainly not from the president. Boehner’s bill, in short, was supposed to be a display of his resolve, his principle, his pride.

Yet all it took was one pronouncement from one head of Jim DeMint’s conservative hydra and — poof! — 25 minutes later, the vote was canceled; the bill was gone.

The pronouncement in question came from the website of Heritage Action, the PAC appendage of the Heritage Foundation, where Jim DeMint is president and the right-wing grass-roots is king. Unlike the Heritage Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Heritage Action can lobby for or against legislation, or not-so-subtly promote one candidate ahead of another in the weeks leading up to primary election day. Like the Senate Conservatives Fund before it, a super PAC DeMint helped create when he was still a senator, Heritage Action serves as DeMint’s legislative cudgel, threatening a grass-roots war against any Republican who doesn’t vote his chosen way.

And yesterday, DeMint’s chosen way was against John Boehner. Labeling the vote a “key vote,” meaning that it would be included on every House Republican’s “legislative scorecard,” Heritage Action strongly came out in opposition to Boehner’s bill. Its problem? “[T]he proposed deal will do nothing to stop Obamacare’s massive new entitlements from taking root,” said the Heritage PAC. It was nothing more than “another Washington-style punt.” It would not save Americans from the Obamacare menace.

Full article:
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/16/boehners_sorry_reality_gops_true_leader_is_jim_demint/

[calimary]

1. How do we save America from the jim demint/heritage action menace?

THAT is the real question here. One that needs urgent and decisive action.

[Filibuster Harry]

2. Demint pulling Boehner's strings. Again, the money in politics issue. The threat of

groups putting up money to primary elected officials. I wonder what the Supreme Court thinks now of
their "Citizens United" decision??