Voting Against John Boehner Just Became The Tea Party's Litmus Test
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is quickly becoming a new litmus test for whether a Republican is conservative.
Outside tea party groups have begun targeting Boehner and those who vote with him in recent days.
On the campaign trail, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), the conservative blowhard who actually has a chance of winning the GOP nomination for Senate, took a shot on Monday at one of his chief competitors, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), by saying voting with Boehner doesn't make you a conservative. Last year Kingston voted for Boehner to be speaker; Broun voted for Rep. Allen West (R-FL), who wasn't even re-elected to Congress in 2012.
"Congressman Kingston conveniently fails to explain that the National Journal uses Speaker Boehner’s position on issues as the benchmark definition of conservative," Broun said according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "By that logic, the more one votes with the Speaker, the more conservative he is. While we all wish that was a reliable measure of conservative, experience has taught that it’s not."
The spark that's fueling the latest anti-Boehner ire seems to have been the speaker's decision to direct his caucus to support a clean debt ceiling hike rather than raising the debt limit as long as Democrats conceded a list of demands.
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/boehner-litmus-test-conservative
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