WASHINGTON – Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert told The Daily Caller that he nominated Newt Gingrich to serve as speaker of the House on Wednesday instead of John Boehner, because “I just figured it was not time for business as usual.”
In a brief interview on Wednesday outside the hearing room where Republicans were voting on leadership positions, Gohmert confirmed that he nominated Gingrich for speaker during the caucus meeting. It’s not required that the speaker of the House be a member of Congress.
No one seconded Gohmert’s nomination, and Boehner was re-elected as speaker.
“He’s a nice man,” Gohmert said, referring to Boehner. “I just felt like it was time to change business as usual.”
“I’ve been giving it some thought,” he told TheDC about his nomination. “Talked to some people about it.”
Gohmert told another reporter that Boehner should no longer be speaker because Republicans should have done better in last week’s election.
“We’ve had the same leader of our party for six years, and actually if you look at the number people that voted for Congress,” he said, “apparently there are more people in the country who voted for Democrats for Congress than Republican, and that doesn’t seem to be a healthy trend if we’re going to fix what’s wrong with the party and the country.”