It’s fascinating — and troubling — to see how despite occasional stories about its waning influence Tea Partiers weild so much clout within the Republican Party. And now we see yet another shift: Tea Partiers are calling Obamacare “BoehnerCare,” a term they intend to use unless he does everything possible (government shut down…or let the country default on its debt) to halt its funding:
Tea party activists are planning to rally outside of House Speaker John A. Boehner’s Ohio office on Tuesday, telling the Republican speaker that if he doesn’t use this year’s spending fight to defund the health care law, it will hence be known to them as “BoehnerCare.”
“If he funds it, he will own it,” said Janet Porter, president of Faith2Action, one of the groups participating in the rally.
\
Republicans have routinely called the health law Obamacare, and even President Obama has embraced the term, using it himself as recently as last week in talking about the benefits, which are slated to kick in fully next year.But Mr. Boehner now finds himself in the cross-hairs. Earlier this summer members of Congress got themselves and their staffs exempted from having to pay out of their own pockets for the health “exchanges,” though they will still be forced out of their government plans and into the health marketplaces.
Now, many of his rank-and-file members want to use this year’s spending bills to defund the health law altogether — something Democrats and Mr. Obama have said is a non-starter and will force them to reject all of the spending bills, leading to a government shutdown.
It’s really boiling down to a battle between the national interests and ideological interests. In the past, leaders would opt for national interest. Want to take a bet on where Boehner will eventually land on this one?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.