For the last couple days, the Tea Party has been bragging that it had the votes to unseat Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) as the Speaker of the House. The boys weren’t happy with Boehner over not falling over the fiscal cliff and actually negotiating with the White House. Well, they failed.
The group of dissident Republicans didn’t even get enough voted on Thursday to push Boehner to a second ballot. Twelve House Republicans broke from Boehner in a tense public roll-call vote, either by voting for someone else or deliberately not voting at all — five short of what would have been needed to force a second ballot.
Former Congressman Allen West (R-FL), a Tea Party darling, 218 votes short of Boehner’s total. It also came in behind the 192 votes for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the three for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. Both Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., and Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tex., voted for West.
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