“The vote Tuesday is just the latest chapter in a long-running saga between Democrats and Boehner,” French wrote. “The Ohio Republican is often forced to turn to Pelosi to deliver votes when legislation, like government spending bills and increases to the debt limit, fail to garner enough support from Republicans. That gives Pelosi, who has watched her caucus sink into the deepest minority Democrats have experienced in decades, an unusually powerful hand in times of crisis.”
...Boehner’s office vigorously denies that any deal with Pelosi took place.
...Pelosi’s office hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
...“Boehner is joining moderate and liberal Republicans with Democrats to cobble together a left of center majority in a Republican House,” Gaston Mooney, the executive editor of Conservative Review, told Breitbart News. “All this in an attempt to marginalize the majority of his own party. The question is how many times can Boehner marginalize the majority of his own party before he completely loses support, and thus his speakership.”
Mooney’s not alone in raising the question of just how much rope Boehner has left before he hangs himself with these Democrat deals. Technically, on Tuesday, to pass the bill to fund executive amnesty after spending months saying he wouldn’t, Boehner violated the so-called Hastert Rule yet again. As such, it’s worth revisiting what Denny Hastert—the Boehner predecessor for which the rule is named—said when Boehner first began flirting with using Democrats to achieve his big government agenda.
“Here is the problem. Maybe you can do it once, maybe you can do it twice, but when you start making deals when you have to get Democrats to pass the legislation, you are not in power anymore,” Hastert, who served as House Speaker from Jan. 6, 1999, through Jan. 3, 2007, said in a Fox News interview when Boehner used Democrat votes to pass the fiscal cliff deal through the House in late 2012.
“When you start passing stuff that your members are not in line with, all of a sudden your ability to lead is in jeopardy because somebody else is making decisions,” Hastert added. “The president is making decisions, Pelosi is making decisions, or they are making the decisions in the Senate. All tax bills and all spending bills under the Constitution start in the House. When you give up that responsibility you really give up your responsibility to govern, and that is the problem.”
GOP Needs to Drop the Elephant & Adopt Rubber Stamp as Party Symbol http://t.co/6BzfYekAov via @gatewaypundit
— Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) March 7, 2015