The short-lived conservative revolt this week against House Speaker John Boehner was not a failure but a "successful example of the courage" required to restore true self-government to America, former ambassador and past presidential candidate Alan Keyes told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
"I saw some people with guts," Keyes told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner, referring to the group of conservative lawmakers who opened the new Congress this week by voting to replace Boehner.
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Boehner prevailed, and later insisted he is
"the most anti-establishment speaker" — a self-description that Keyes dismissed as contrary to the reality of Boehner's record.
"I don't care what John Boehner says; I only look at what he has done," said Keyes.
Keyes said that Boenher and new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky both represent a self-serving "elitist faction" in Congress that has kowtowed to President Barack Obama and "spit in the face" of the voters who rewarded them in November with a new Senate majority and an increased House majority.
To put their improved position to proper use on behalf of the American people, "Republicans in Congress are going to have to find a backbone, which they don't have,"said Keyes.
"They have consistently, simply been capitulating to Obama on the domestic issues and in terms of acquiescence … to foreign policy that has been riddled with scandalous failure, and that has essentially offered aid and comfort to enemies of the Untied States," he said.
Keyes, who served in the State Department and as a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations' Economic and Social Council, also discussed the massacre at a Paris newspaper office carried out by Islamist gunmen.
He described the attack as an example of the kind of miseries the world endures when U.S. leadership at home and abroad is "faltering," as he said it is under Obama.
"Nothing has really been done to maintain our strength, which is fundamental, I think, to the will that the world is going to have against this kind of atrocity," said Keyes.
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