Politics

Crowd cheers Meadows for bucking Boehner

By Bill Moss, Published: June 30, 2015

A month ago, U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows announced that a national figure would headline his second annual Faith and Freedom Rally at the WNC Agriculture Center.

Little did he know then that in the ensueing weeks internal hardball politics of the U.S. Congress would thrust him into the national spotlight. Although Ben Carson, the retired surgeon and presidential candidate, delivered a well-received keynote speech, it was Meadows, the second term Republican from Highlands, who basked in the adulation of a hometown crowd who cheered him for standing up to the establishment GOP leadership.
Fired and then reinstated as chair of a subcommittee that oversees government operations, Meadows had in a week’s time come to represent both the hazardous politics of crossing the boss and the power of the Internet, phone lines and talk radio to reverse what Meadows supporters believed was a wrongful act of reprisal. One email supporter told Meadows he could tell House Speaker John Boehner — spelling it out — to go to H-E-L-L.
“The last couple of weeks have been a little interesting," Meadows said, drawing laughter and applause from the large crowd feasting on the standard chopped barbecue, coleslaw and baked bean feed. "But when you are on the side of the people that sent you to Washington, D.C., there’s no fear, there is no trepidation. And when you melted down the phone lines, things happened. Thank you so much. I tell you what. You are unbelievable. Unbelievable.
“Sometimes when people say, well, they’re going to make a phone call or two, they make a phone call or two,” he went on. “Sometimes when they get a little more oomph behind them, not only were you making a phone call or two to my office but you were making a phone call or two to a few other offices, and I tell you what, Ronald Reagan used to say, ‘If you can’t make them see the light you need to make them feel the heat.’ You made them feel the heat.”
Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, last Thursday reversed his decision of just six days earlier after facing a withering blitz of anger from right-leaning Republicans, columnists and radio talkers siding with Meadows over House Speaker John Boehner, who had supported  Chaffetz's decision to sack Meadows for bucking the leadership on the Obama-supported trade bill.

“Chairman Chaffetz was very honorable and reinstated me,” Meadows said. “That doesn’t always happen. Many times people pay the price, and ultimately they just pay the price.”
As he walked the halls and rode elevators in Washington, people kept asking how he was doing, assuming he’d be crushed or beaten down.
“I put it in perspective. We’ve got people of faith, Christians, being beheaded around the world,” he said. “We had an unbelievable horrific tragedy happen in Charleston just a few days ago, where lives were taken. And the worst thing that happened to me is I got fired in an air-conditioned building in the most powerful place in the country. Life ain’t all that bad when you look at it that way.
“When you have the faith in the Lord, when you have the backing of literally thousands of friends, it does your heart good. I want to say thank you… If you think that your voice doesn’t matter, I’m here to tell you that it matters across this country because we got word from California to Maine, from Maine to Florida and in between from patriots who said, ‘You know what, we’ve had enough of the status quo.’”