Conservatives Don't Have the Votes to Unseat Boehner, but They're Chattering About It
House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, smiles while arriving to a news conference in Washington on Nov. 6, 2014, after his party won at least 245 House of Representatives seats in that week's elections, giving Republicans their largest majority since World War II.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/BloombergFrom Dec. 26-30, the polling firm EMC Research asked 602 "Republican voters and independents who lean Republican and voted Republican in 2014" what they thought of Speaker of the House John Boehner. They were not fans. Sure, they viewed Boehner favorably, 43 percent to 34 percent, but by a 60-25 margin they favored replacing Boehner with "someone new." By a 64-24 margin, they considered Boehner ineffective.
The pollsters might have captured some Republican angst in the wake of a disappointing lame-duck Congress and the full funding of the president's immigration action. Yet the sentiment isn't new. Just as they did in the run-up to the January 2013 speaker vote, conservative insurgents are trying to convince themselves that Boehner can be overthrown. This poll was given first to National Review's Jim Geraghty, who reported it was commissioned by an organization called the People’s Poll, and shortly thereafter it got front-page treatment from Breitbart.com. That site's reporter, Matthew Boyle, had covered the 2013 revolt against Boehner as if it was on the verge of succeeding. That did not chasten him.