GOP lawmaker: Effort to oust Boehner ‘dumbest idea’

A conservative member of the House Freedom Caucus called Rep. Mark Meadows’ effort to oust House Speaker John Boehner “the dumbest idea I’ve seen here.”

GOP Rep. Tom McClintock (Calif.) tells The Hill’s Molly K. Hooper that Meadows’ resolution “is an extremely dangerous precedent … it would move the house dramatically to the left and is about the dumbest idea I’ve seen here.”

{mosads}McClintock, a conservative who has gone toe-to-toe with GOP leaders over budgetary issues, says that he didn’t know about Meadows’s intention to introduce a resolution that would set up a process to oust Boehner as Speaker.

He said he learned “second-hand,” however, that Meadows “shared” his plan “with the so-called board who asked him not to do it,” a reference to the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Other Republicans were outraged that Meadows’ timed the effort to coincide with the start of the five-week-long August recess.

“It’s totally baseless, you don’t bring down a Speaker because you disagree with him politically, especially conservatives, shouldn’t be doing this. This is the type of chaos you see in a third world banana republic,” said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.).

To hear McClintock and King in their own words, please watch the video above.