Tea Party Urges GOP Not To Throw Away Election Victories
Tea Party constituents and leaders are urging Republican Party leaders to support their calls for upholding immigration laws instead of choosing to capitulate to their Democratic rivals and throw away their major victories in the 2014 mid-term elections.
The Republican Party gained seats in both the House and Senate during the 2014 elections, including enough seats in the Senate to become the majority party. These election victories occurred with large support from voters identifying as Tea Partiers, citizens who support, among other things, a fiscally responsible government and the enforcement of law and order.
Tea Partiers and Republican leadership have often been at odds on policy and recent media reports indicate that the Republican leadership is preparing to agree on legislation that Tea Partiers and others who supported the Republicans in the mid-term elections strongly oppose.
The Huffington Post reports that leaks out of Washington indicate House Speaker John Boehner plans to propose a spending bill that would “fund the government through next year” with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS would only be funded through March 2015. This will allow for the funding of President Obama’s recent executive action granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, something the Tea Party wants stopped and believes will become harder to stop if funding occurs.
Bloomberg Politics expanded on how the potential Boehner plan would attempt to placate Tea Partiers with a symbolic gesture against the president’s executive order. “In the first step, the House will cast a symbolic vote tomorrow against Obama’s Nov. 20 orders to ease deportation of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The second step requires both chambers next week to pass a separate bill funding almost all of the federal government.”
Opponents to the alleged Boehner plan have offered two alternatives to it.
Bloomberg Politics reports that “some opponents of Boehner’s approach, including [Rep. John] Fleming, want that funding to expire in January so the new Republican-controlled Congress can defund the parts of that agency tasked with carrying out Obama’s orders.”
The same Bloomberg Politics article later reported that Texas Senator Ted Cruz, “… said Congress should pass a short-term spending bill that would add language blocking Obama’s immigration orders to funding for the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice.” Cruz’s Twitter feed reiterates his strong his support for immigration law.
Please stand with @MicheleBachmann, @SteveKingIA and me in fighting President Obama’s Amnesty. #StopObamasAmnesty pic.twitter.com/prYu98w8zA
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) December 3, 2014
Media reports and columnists are insisting that neither the Tea Party or Republican Party leadership would allow a so-called government shutdown over funding disagreements regarding the president’s amnesty order and, therefore, they will pass some sort of funding bill before the December 11 deadline. The last government shutdown occurred in 2013 and was covered by the Inquisitr. Columnist Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times claims that the 2013 shutdown was disastrous for the Republicans and therefore won’t be repeated.
“Boehner, of Ohio, has already ruled out another government shutdown. The last time the GOP tried that, in 2013, it was an inglorious failure that drove the party’s popularity to record lows.”
What Boehner actually proposes for government spending and how Tea Party advocates respond remains to be seen. But the fight over budgeting between the Tea Party and Republican leadership will be fierce, and Tea Partiers will be very upset if the Republicans choose to throw away their 2014 election victories by supporting the president’s executive order for amnesty.
[Image via Ted Cruz Facebook page]
