For almost three years, the story in the House has been about Speaker John Boehner’s restive right flank causing him problems. But Republican moderates have apparently had enough.
In what is by far their boldest stand since the GOP took control of the House in 2010, a group of them are threatening to bring down a vote on the rule for the government-funding bill scheduled for 6:30 p.m.
New York representative Peter King is leading the charge, and his fellow New Yorker Michael Grimm is close behind him. The group told leadership on Saturday they have 25 members who are willing to bring down the rule.
That number of defections would defeat the rule, which, like all such votes, is a party-line affair. “How many of them are going to follow up today with the pressure and everything else, I don’t know,” King told me in a phone interview.
King wants to pass a clean continuing-resolution bill. “This is going nowhere,” he says about the standoff with Senate Democrats. “If Obamacare is as bad as we say it’s going to be, then we should pick up a lot of seats in the next election and we should win the presidency in 2016,” he says. “This idea of going through the side door to take something you lost through the front door — to me, it’s wrong.”