Republicans: It Was God's Plan to Keep Speaker Boehner!

Members of the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party didn’t try to oust Speaker John Boehner from his perch because God told them not to, a Washington Post report highlighted by Salon’s Jillian Rayfield states.

The background to the story is that in January, a vote within the new House Republican caucus occurred on whether to keep Boehner on as speaker. Some conservatives were upset that Boehner had allowed a deal to be struck that averted the so-called “fiscal cliff,” and they wanted Boehner out because of it. But in the end, only 12 GOP members voted against Boehner. That was short of the 17 needed to force another vote on the Speaker slot.

Yesterday, the Washington Post revealed new details about why Boehner kept his slot in a story published about the Republican Party’s warring factions. One reason why Boehner wasn’t ousted is because “several Republicans, after a night of prayer, said God told them to spare the speaker,” according to the Post’s Paul Kane.

Florida Rep. Steve Southerland told Kane that he “read the Old Testament the night before the vote.”

“He’s not a God of chaos, he’s a God of order,” said Southerland, who woke up the day of the vote deciding that Boehner should stay.

Kane also granted anonymity to other Republicans who also “prayed before siding with Boehner.”