Two years ago, Rep. Mick Mulvaney learned a lesson in the often-conniving game of politics.
The South Carolina conservative was part of the trickle of Republicans attempting to oust John Boehner as speaker of the House in 2013. Like Tuesday, the coup failed and Mulvaney’s hopes for greater conservative leadership ended in backlash.
“Conservatives were marginalized, and Boehner was even freer to work with moderates and Democrats,” Mulvaney wrote on his Facebook page of the 2013 attempt.
That’s his explanation for why he took a different approach this time around. On Tuesday, Mulvaney deviated from some of his conservative colleagues, voting for Boehner in a move that both angered some of his constituents and evoked “sell-out” media attacks.
Mulvaney took to Facebook to defend the vote, illustrating his previous “experience with coup attempts” against Boehner while chastising his Republican colleagues for pursuing a “fool’s errand.”
“This was an effort driven as much by talk radio as by a thoughtful and principled effort to make a change,” Mulvaney wrote of the attempted coup. “It was poorly considered and poorly executed, and I learned first-hand that is no way to fight a battle. This coup today was bound to fail.”
Mulvaney pointed to the 2013 attempt as an example to learn from, specifically in the realm of whipping votes. In that speaker election, Mulvaney ultimately chose not to cast a vote for anyone.
“People lie about how they are going to vote. And you cannot go into this kind of fight with people you do not trust,” he wrote. “We walked onto the floor two years go with signed pledges—handwritten promises—from more than enough people to deny Boehner his job. But when it came time to vote, almost half of those people changed their minds.”
This year “was even worse,” Mulvaney wrote, as Republicans didn’t have the vote number they needed to begin with.
“In fact, it failed worse than I expected, falling 11 votes short of deposing the speaker. At least two years ago we only failed by six.”
Mulvaney said Republicans should have begun coup attempts in November with a secret ballot measuring “the true level” of Boehner opposition. This would have then inspired “credible” candidates to challenge the speaker position.
He spoke against Rep. Louie Gohmert’s attempt, writing that the Texan Republican would never be House speaker, illustrated “by the fact that he got three votes, despite all the national media attention he managed to grab.”
Mulvaney also criticized Rep. Daniel Webster’s attempt, citing his 60 percent Heritage Action lifetime score versus Mulvaney’s own 91 percent.
“This was supposed to be the savior of the conservative movement? Would the House really have been more conservative if he had won?” he asked.
Mulvaney said he understood the frustration with Washington coupled with Boehner’s role in some of its problems, but dubbed yesterday’s coup attempt a “fool’s errand.”
“I am all for fighting, but I am more interested in fighting and winning than I am fighting an unwinnable battle.”
Read Mulvaney’s entire post here.
