Just a few days after House Republican Leader John Boehner finally to have a few people over at the National Republican Congressional Committee fired, the numbers are now public.
So how bad are the fundraising number? Well, the NRCC is :
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) reported $1.6million in cash on hand and $4 million in debts as of Aug. 31. Thegroup helps bankroll House campaigns for GOP candidates.
Its counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,reported $22.1 million, more than 10 times its Republican counterpart.
"If there's no money in the bank, it's going to be hard to takeseats away from the Democrats," said Massie Ritsch of the Center forResponsive Politics, a Washington, D.C.-based campaign finance watchdoggroup.
At the end of the second quarter, six of the eight Democratic presidential candidates had than the entire NRCC does right now.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is warning Democrats that he will instruct his fellow Republicans to vote against the newly proposed Iraq war spending bill that includes benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet. Boehner's main is that Bush would have to come back every two months and ask the Congress for more funding:
"Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid should not treat our men and women inuniform like they are children who are getting a monthly allowance,"House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statementTuesday. "Republicans will not support rationing funds for our troopsin harm's way and neither will the American people."
Mr. House Minority Leader, George W. Bush is not a soldier, never was one and will never have to worry about being in that position. So stop equating efforts to change the President's war policy with tying the hands of our men and women in uniform. Bush and our troops are not the same entity. And believe me, our troops' hands were tied as soon as the Administration became politically path-dependent on war.
You -- the party of stop-loss, Walter Reed and VA cuts -- accuse Democrats of treating our soldiers like children? Just to think, back in 2001 I was just a few days away from changing my party affiliation to Republican. Thanks for assuring that I will never even consider going off the deep end anytime soon.
House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner stirred it up a bit over the weekendwhen he told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, "unless progress isevident in Iraq by early fall, many Republican lawmakers would begin losingpatience." Deadlines and benchmarks are ok as long as they come fromthe republicans or the Bush ?
from the Sunday talk shows was probably the by the Republican leader of the House, Representative John Boehner,about whether his fellow Republican lawmakers would continue to supportPresident Bush on Iraq if no progress is evident by early autumn.
Itseems some of the holdouts are stepping up to them plate and finally openingtheir mouths. Maybe their conscience got to them, maybe their friends and peers,or maybe even The Family Dinner Table. Either way, they are distancingthemselves from the future Bush legacy which will most likely be a chorus ofcrickets.
Related article at The Washington Post:
The fulltranscript of Bohner's interview on Fox News Sunday at , and a thank you to C & L for the video.
A secret memo by new Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner was leaked to a few political blogs, including the site . Titled The Mission Ahead, Boehner unveils a plan to win back Congress in 2008. Here is an excerpt:
I want to commend you all for the restraint and discipline you'vedemonstrated in recent weeks as the spotlight has shifted to the futurecustodians of the House. I know you're already tired of hearing me sayit -- but adjusting to our new status means recognizing there's a timeand a place for everything.
Sometimes we'll need to work with the new majority to advance Republican principles and the good of our nation.
Sometimes we'll need to engage, dig in, and fight the Democrats toe to toe.
And sometimes we'll want to simply get out of the way and letthe other side struggle under the weight of its own insincere promises,internal turmoil, and inherent contradictions. The past couple of weeks-- clearly -- have been such an occasion.
Mr. Boehner, you forgot one thing: your party no longer has the gavel. In the House, unlike the Senate, the minority party has zero control over what issues are to be debated and when. How do they plan to fight Democrats "toe to toe" if no one is going to be listening to your side anymore? Like it or not, President Bush is the leader of your party. That is some poster boy. I'd hate to be in your shoes.
The election of (R-OH) as Republican House Minority Leader is so disturbing, and shows where the GOP is headed. This is an individual who still there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that Donald Rumsfeld was a great Defense Secretary. He even continues to spread the false notion that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network played a in the 9/11 attacks on America. And as the Generals have had to put up with Rumsfeld's incompetence, Boehner those same Generals for the setbacks in Iraq.
For any public official to invent reality like that is extremely dangerous, and we are so fortunate that his party lost control of the House of Representatives.
It is a fundamental rule that politicians in positions of power will help destroy one of their own allies if it means obtaining more power. That is precisely what is unfolding right now between House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Senate Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).
Although they are both from the GOP, the Foley scandal has opened up an intra-party cat fight between the two. The fight is over when Hastert knew about the Foley emails? Speaker Hastert claims he did not learn about Congressman Mark Foley's emails until the spring of this year. Boehner, however, strongly disagrees, and says he told Hastert years before.
On a Chicago radio station earlier this month, Boehner put most of the on Speaker Hastert:
"My position," he continued, "is, it's in his corner. It's hisresponsibility. The clerk of the House that runs the page program [and]the page board, all report to the Speaker, and I believed it had beendealt with."
While what John Boehner said might be true, he has some explaining to do as well. Throughout the Foley aftermath, has been anything but consistent. On September 29th, the week the Foley scandal broke, Boehner the Washington Post that he spoke with Hastert -- only to call the post again one day later and tell them that he actually couldn't remember, forcing the newspaper to a story it published that Saturday. Then, just one week later, he went on the Chicago radio station to say that he did indeed tell Hastert. So obviously Boehner's story changes depending on which way the political winds blow.
Both Boehner and Hastert are doing damage control -- but it is within plain sight, making it even more obvious. Boehner knows that if Hastert is forced out, then he will be next in line for the Speaker position. But because Boehner keeps altering his story, he might be lumped in with Hastert and kicked out of the GOP leadership. A couple of weeks back, I was told by a party source via email that Congressman (R-CA), currently the House Majority Whip, could be bumped up to the Speaker position because he has done a careful but spectacular job of distancing himself from the Foley scandal.
Of course, Democrats would remind us that this GOP leadership fight won't mean a thing if Congress changes hands this November, ensuring once and for all that neither Hastert nor Boehner will have any say in policy for at least the next two years.
Behind the scenes, John Boehner (R-OH) is positioning himself very well to become the next Speaker of the House at least until January, assuming the Democrats are in a good position to take back majority in November
Amid the predatorgate scandal that has blossomed into an indictment of current Speaker Dennis Hastert (IL), who knew about Foley's e-mail last year, the conservative Washington Times Editorial Board called for . And now Hastert's key ally, Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner, is turning against him.
On a Cincinnati radio station, the responsibility falls on the shoulders of Hastert:
"I believe I talked to the speaker, and he told me it had been takencare of," he said, when asked about the e-mails that were not sexuallyexplicit. He said that had occurred last spring.
"In myposition, it's in his corner, it's his responsibility. The clerk of theHouse, who runs the page program, the page board, all report to thespeaker, and I believed it had been dealt with. Again, I didn't knowthe context of what even the original message (said)," he added.
Boehnernoted that his daughter had been a Senate page several years ago, andsaid of Foley, "if I'd known anything about the context of all thiswhen it occurred, I'd have drug him out of there by his shirt sleeves."
Now that is Politics 101. When you begin to lose power, other politicians, regardless of party, see it as a weakness and take advantage of you. Don't get me wrong: Hastert should resign. But Boehner would probably be an even more polarizing House Speaker. In fact, last week that he believes Saddam had a "supportive role" in 9/11. So by Dennis Hastert's departure, we would be going from corrupt to just plain loony!
What is going on here? It's as if we haven't learned anything over the last three years. Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner went on Hardball and promoted the fictitious notion that Saddam Hussein was allied with al Qaeda and gave a "supportive role" in 9/11.
Boehner also thinks Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction in 2002, and represented a direct threat to the United States. When pressed by Chris Matthews, Boehner had a difficult time explaining how we are better off now for having gone into Iraq. Again, this is the Republican House Majority Leader we are talking about here. If you're looking for a reason to vote Democrat in November, this interview should do the trick.
Click to watch the
--- Partial Transcript ---
MATTHEWS: "Do you believe he (Saddam Hussein) had a role in 9/11?"
BOEHNER: "Not a direct role, a supportive role. A supportive role."
MATTHEWS: "What was the support?"
BOEHNER: "Uh, training terrorists, training camps in Iraq..."
Later on...
MATTHEWS: "So Saddam was in league with the al Qaeda group?"
BOEHNER: "He was providing cover for them."
MATTHEWS: "I keep trying to find that evidence Congressman, and I can't find it. Nobody's come up with it."
You know how there are some adults who speak to other adults as if they are children? John Boehner reminded me of that kind of person when I watched this interview.
After Tom DeLay gave up his House Majority Leader post amid a wider corruption scandal that has plagued Capitol Hill these last few years, his replacement, John Boehner, has a lot to live up to. After all, Mr. DeLay was one of the founding fathers of the infamously lobbyist-friendly "K-Street Project."
But many thought that Boehner was of a different breed. After all, his colleagues on Capitol Hill do look up to the Ohio Congressman as a distributor of party talking points, which other Republicans use while on talk shows to channel blame towards the Democrats.
Ever since Boehner took the job as House Majority Leader, he has lived up to that expectation. For example, after the Supreme Court ruled against the White House on the detainee issue, that slammed the court for granting "special privileges to terrorists," and said that the Democrats "celebrate" those privileges.
And just this week, Boehner's office , this time portraying the Republican Party as low spenders, while painting the Democrats as "fiscally irresponsible." Heading into the November elections, Republicans are trying to make voters forget that the GOP Congressional majority has presided over the since the Johnson Administration.
But even though John Boehner is skilled at crafting rhetoric, behind our backs he is picking up where Tom DeLay left off: in the pockets of powerful lobbyists. Except, he is exceeding what DeLay was ever capable of doing. Read this, it (Saturday Morning NY Times):
And far from trying to put the brakes on lobbyists and the moneythey channel into Republican coffers, Mr. Boehner, who has portrayedhis ties to Washington lobbyists as something to be proud of, hasstepped on the gas.
He has been holding fund-raisers atlobbyists’ offices, flying to political events on corporate planes andstaying at a golf resort with a business group that has a direct stakein issues before Congress.
Tapping a rich vein of longstandingrelationships with lobbyists and their corporate clients, Mr. Boehner,an Ohio Republican, has raised campaign contributions at a rate ofabout $10,000 a day since February, surpassing the pace set by formerRepresentative Tom DeLay after he became majority leader in 2002, a review of federal filings shows.
His fund-raising pace is roughly twice what it was before he becamemajority leader in February; in April his two federal committees tookin $334,500 from political action committees, a monthly take that Mr.DeLay did not match for more than two years after the elections in2002.
Mr. Boehner’s biggest donors include the politicalaction committees of lobbying firms, drug and cigarette makers, banks,health insurers, oil companies and military contractors. Seven AmericanIndian tribes with casinos have contributed $32,000.
And despitean intensified spotlight on Congressional trip taking, Mr. Boehner flewto a golf resort in Boca Raton, Fla., in March for a convention ofcommodities traders, who have contributed more than $100,000 to hiscampaigns and are lobbying against a proposed federal tax on futurestransactions.
During the trip, Mr. Boehner assured his hosts that Congress would most likely not approve a tax they opposed.
As you can see, John Boehner is doing a lot more than crafting talking points. He is bridging the gap between lobbyists and our lawmakers, keeping average people like you and me out in the cold to fend for our own needs.
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