A Call for New GOP Leadership: John Boehner Must Go

Today, I co-authored a call for a change in the Republican leadership in Congress, a follow-up to our warning from earlier this year titled, "We Refuse to Support a Permanent Minority." It follows:

MEMO TO REPUBLICANS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: CHANGE YOUR LEADERSHIP NOW

By Rich Wagner and Chip Hanlon

November 6, 2008 

Yesterday, November 5th, House Minority Leader John Boehner delivered a letter to all House Republicans stating his case for being re-elected as House Minority Leader.   We respectfully submit that it is simply not credible to ask the American people to return Republicans to the majority in Congress when all we offer them is essentially the same group of leaders they rejected in 2006 and again on November 4th.

Pretend you could roll back the clock to November of 2000 -- one day before that year's Bush vs. Gore Presidential election. You're asked to predict the winner, knowing that over the next eight years, the winner would enact the following:

Sarbanes-Oxley; McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform; prescription Medicare; the Department of Homeland Security; steel and lumber tariffs; runaway spending; massive budget deficits; pork-laden energy, transportation and agriculture bills; the No Child Left Behind Act; "stimulus" packages; and the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the list goes on...

In looking at the list above, you would have guessed that not only did Al Gore win, but that he had a solid Democratic majority in Congress as well.  So we ask:  Where did all of the big spending and hordes of earmarks get us, as a party, on November 4th?

Republican principles haven't failed.  Republican leadership has.

...read the rest of this article at California's leading state-wide political blog, the Flash Report.