Conservative advocates opposed to House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) debt limit plan aren’t relenting just because GOP leadership is twisting arms.
Club for Growth president Chris Chocola, and Red State founder Erick Erickson are both continuing to push House Republicans to vote against Boehner’s plan when it comes to a vote on Thursday. Indeed, they’re opposed to any plan that doesn’t guarantee vast spending reductions, and allow conservatives to declare victory in a decades long fight over the propriety of federal safety net programs.
“That’s why groups like the Club for Growth and others oppose the Boehner debt reduction plan, the Reid debt reduction plan, the McConnell debt reduction plan (has there been an Obama debt reduction plan?), and any other plan that does not include those basic tenets,” Chocola writes in a Wednesday afternoon Politico op-ed. “Even newspapers like the Wall Street Journal that support the Boehner plan point out that ‘It’s true that the Boehner plan doesn’t solve the long-term debt problem.’”
Erickson — an influential figure among House conservatives — is taking names.
“The GOP would not fight for smaller government when it was in the majority and now it seems it intends to cave abjectly in the minority hiding behind its minority status instead of fighting,” he wrote in response to Wednesday’s developments. “If the GOP won’t fight in the majority and it won’t fight in the minority, what good is it? Even now, guys like Jeff Flake and Mike Pence seem to be going wobbly…. these are the fights that define a conservative’s legacy in Congress. The new guys might not realize that. But ultimately, we conservatives remember.”
Several Republicans continue to oppose Boehner’s plan, and several more remain on the fence. That latter group is getting pulled in every direction.
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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