The 25 lawmakers who tried to oust House Speaker John Boehner from his post on Tuesday were "conservatives asserting ourselves," Iowa Rep. Steve King said Wednesday on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV.
The tea party-aligned members of the Republican conference are upset with Boehner for his perceived lack of commitment to conservative principles, according to King.
"This election was about repealing Obamacare, block the president's executive amnesty and put the president in a political straightjacket," he said.
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GOP leadership has continually failed to stand up to the president and his liberal agenda, charged King, who did not vote for Boehner on Tuesday.
"There are a whole myriad of things," King told host J.D. Hayworth about why the GOP’s most conservative members wanted to get rid of Boehner.
"We've watched as we had a wave election in 2010 and 87 new Republicans were elected, and every one of them ran on the full repeal of Obamacare. We didn't do what we said we were going to do.
"We had a chance to cut off the funding and block the implementation and the enforcement of Obamacare. That got blocked by actions of the speaker. The executive amnesty was built on the DACA program.
"Time after time, when we've had the obligations to defend often our constitutional principles, and when Obama violated the constitution … we hardly had a peep out of leadership."
Some of those who didn’t support the speaker later learned they had been
removed from committee positions, though King said Boehner may reverse course.
"The speaker's going to reconsider that action, and we will see how that comes out," King said. "They'll take a few hours to get this resolved, I don't think they'll let it sit very long.
"I can understand why the speaker needs people that he can count on in the Rules Committee, we know how that system works, but you don't kick them off for voting their conscience on a constitutional vote on the floor."
Boehner’s actions as speaker have "taken the tools off the table that could have protected our constitutional obligations to be legislators … and the maneuverings of the speaker block our ability to keep our oath to defend the constitution," he said.
"I could not reconcile voting for Speaker Boehner, whom I know. I've seen the movie over and over again, they just changed the title, but it's the same movie. The title now is executive amnesty. It looks to me it's on the path and they got permanently funded. That's the stand that a lot of us took.
"We need to have a bottom-up organization, not a top-down. We've got to stop writing bills at the speaker's office and have members bring the bills from the good ideas of our constituents," King said. "That's where the push-backs are coming from."
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