On Tuesday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer speculated that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor might try to replace John Boehner as speaker of the House.
“It’s possible this is the prelude to a challenge Thursday to Boehner’s leadership by Eric Cantor,” Krauthammer said. “I think that would be quite naked to do it at this late hour, as a result of this split over the vote. Look, there are a lot of conservatives in the Republican caucus in the House who hate the bill — and for good reason. I mean, this is a complete surrender on everything. The ratio of tax cuts — of tax hikes to spending cuts — is 40 to 1, rather than 1 to 1 or 1 to 2 or 1 to 3. So, I mean it’s a complete rout by the Democrats. So it’s understandable.”
Krauthammer said that if the House rejects the Senate fiscal cliff bill, Republicans should start over with a clean slate in the new Congress.
“They will probably be enough with all the Democrats to pass this,” Krauthammer said. “If the Republicans vote it down … the first bill of the new Congress … should be exact replica of the first item on the bill today, i.e. you pass the Obama cuts. It’ll be pure tax cuts. … So what you are saying to the markets and the world is, ‘We’re going to introduce the cuts Thursday — a clean bill. None of the other stuff in it, like the wind power credit and all of this other stimulus junk.'”