GOP House Speaker John Boehner has a favorite mendacious meme that whatever the tea party House does -- repealing Obamacare dozens of time; holding the world economy hostage to unprecedented debt-limit blackmail; doing nothing to create good jobs; slashing federal spending on education, food stamps, environmental protection, roads and bridges, etc.; nibbling away at reproductive rights; launching spurious investigations into non-existent scandals, et al. -- represents what the "American people" want.
For example, this, from May:
More, below.
In February, Boehner invoked the "American people" to oppose raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires:
How much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government? I’m for no more.
From October 2011,
during the House Republicans' unprecedented blackmail campaign over raising the debt limit to pay for what Congress had appropriated:
In our "Pledge to America" that we outlined almost a year ago, on the eve of the last election, one of the commitments we made was to listen to the American people and to follow the lead of the American people. And trust me, we're continuing to listen to the American people.
And the American people are telling us, here's what you need to do. Stop the regulatory onslaught coming out of Washington. Fix this tax code so that American companies can be more competitive in a worldwide economy. And then thirdly, stop the overspending that's serving as a wet blanket over our economy.
The "American people" have never told Congress to "stop the regulatory onslaught" -- that is the prime directive that Republicans received from their masters -- billionaire polluters like the Koch brothers, Wall Street banksters, corporations who profit from abusing their workers, pyramid-scheme billionaires like the Amway gang, etc.
The American people voted just last November. We re-elected President Obama by a comfortable margin; we elected two more Democratic Senators, despite defending twice as many seats; we elected eight more Democratic House members, despite outrageous GOP redistricting efforts, and Democratic House candidates garnered more than 1.4 million more votes than Republican House candidates.
The 2012 election results were pretty clear, and did not provide a mandate from the "American people" for the tea party nullification that Boehner's slim House majority wants.
Just once I'd like to hear someone from the Beltway press challenge Boehner on his everyday lies that the American people support his extremist agenda.