John Boehner may be losing his job come January. The election for the House Speakership will be held January 3, and he may be facing a challenge from the tea party caucus. His Plan B had a tax increase!
House GOP members take seriously the idea that if you go after the king, you'd better get him. Tea partiers are trying to rig it so that the election for Speaker is a secret ballot. That way, they can vote against Boehner without fearing retribution should he survive the attack. This is not the most courageous approach obviously, but it just might work to unseat Boehner.
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, noting that the Constitution says nothing about whether or not the Speaker must actually be a member of the House, proposes that Jon Huntsman be Speaker. He figures Huntsman is a legitimate conservative who could garner some GOP votes, and is moderate enough that he could get some Democrats.
The Constitution does not clearly state that the Speaker must be a member of the House, but it hints in that direction and has always been the case in actual practice.
In any case, it does not say anything about the Speaker being a living person either. Why not Ronald Reagan for Speaker of the House? The problem is not that he's no longer living. The biggest problem is that he's not conservative enough.
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