Tea Party Nation head calls for primary challenge to Boehner, says Charlie Sheen is "making more sense"
A Tea Party leader is vociferously abandoning support for House Speaker John Boehner, writing in a blog post that the Ohio Republican has looked like "a fool" in recent House debates over the federal budget, and comparing him and comparing him unfavorably to actor Charlie Sheen, whose recent comments have garnered a lot of attention recently.
"You look like a fool," wrote Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips, in a message on the group's blog. "Charlie Sheen is now making more sense than John Boehner."
Phillips, a controversial figure with a history of making inflammatory statements (most recently about the mass shootings in Tucson, Arizona, which killed 6 and injured 14), wrote that "it is time to primary John Boehner."
Citing a 2010 GOP campaign pledge to cut $100 billion from the federal budget, Phillips wrote that House Republicans, who recently passed a budget that cut only $61 billion (which itself is unlikely to pass through the Senate), had fallen short on their promises.
"Early on, the GOP promised to cut $100 billion from the budget," Phillips said. "The Republicans in the House quickly went squishy on that and had to be cajoled into cutting only $61 billion. Now, John Boehner is saying when the Senate comes back and they start negotiating...the $61 billion figure is not safe."
"The honeymoon is over," Phillips declared in the headline of the piece.
"There is no other way to put this," he wrote. "The Tea Party movement should find a candidate to run against John Boehner in 2012 and should set as a goal, to defeat in a primary, the sitting Speaker of the House of Representatives."
In an interview with CNN, Phillips added that Boehner was not "operating from a position of strength."
However, despite this threat from Phillips, Boehner appears unlikely to face much of a challenge to keep his seat in Congress, as CBSNews.com senior political reporter Brian Montopoli points out.
"Boehner is not in serious danger of losing his seat, which he has held since 1991, barring some serious gaffe," Montopoli said. "He has massive name recognition as well as fundraising capabilities that a primary opponent could not compete with. But Phillips knows he can generate attention for himself and raise money for his group by floating the possibility."
Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express, expressed similar frustrations with the GOP's lack of success in enacting more drastic budget cuts, but largely attributed the failure to a "very difficult situation."
"I can't say I'm extremely happy with [Republican] leadership," Kremer told CNN. "But I do think that they have taken steps in the right direction. I don't think we can be purists about this. We're in a very, very difficult situation. And we did not get here overnight."
But, she continued, "can they cut more? Absolutely."
