As I write this, we are hours away from the vote for House Speaker.

Right now, opponents of current Speaker John Boehner are trying to whip enough people (29) to deny him the job on the first ballot. There are at least 20 votes against him so far as of this writing.

The laundry list of reasons to get rid of Boehner is a mile wide, and that’s being generous. The popular opinion of the pundit class is that Boehner survives again like he did 2 years ago when only 9 members voted against him.

This brings up an important question: is the GOP really as committed to fighting the Democrats as they claim or are they just stringing us along?

We as conservatives who vote for the Republican Party have to be prepared for the possibility that we’re just being strung along and that the appearance of opposition is kept up so there is no viable party that actually stands for the Constitution and for liberty.

In the four years with Boehner as Speaker, we’ve seen no substantial pushback against Comrade Obama and his merry band of fellow travelers. We’ve seen surrender after surrender, from every debt ceiling battle to the continuing resolutions to Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty to his use of the IRS to suppress his critics vis a vis Joseph Stalin.

Obama lays down a demand, the GOP talks tough for a while, and then they end up giving away more than Obama demanded in the first place.

It’s not enough that Boehner is lousy leader who can’t inspire the troops and whip Republicans into pushing back, it’s that the caucus is set to reelect him again. No one wants the job, we’re told. We’re told that it’s a thankless job. We’re told that we have to compromise, make deals, and get along. It may be a thankless job, but that’s what we sent them there to do. It’s what they told us they would do.

This isn’t a question of purity or of purging the RINOs as we conservatives are always accused of doing. This is a question of whether people’s word means anything anymore.

If Republicans get elected by promising to be the loyal opposition who will stand for limited government, who then cave once office, why do we continue to elect them?

And the only real answer is: because they’re not Democrats.

And if that’s all they’ve got going for them, they’re not going to last much longer. And that doesn’t portend well for the Republic.

I’m sure that many of you reading this feel that Boehner needs to go. It frustrates many to no end that Boehner is likely to sail to reelection as Speaker. But this says as much about him as it does about the GOP caucus. If the caucus is willing to send him back, it says they have no fight in them. And if no one wants the job, it means they all want power and prestige, but no one wants to do the grunt work.

A free society can’t survive if no one wants to do the grunt work. Or rather, the politicians feverishly work to undermine the grunt work being done by the grassroots.

If the Republican Party as currently constituted is the last hope to stop the Democrats and save the Republic, we may as well turn the lights off and say goodbye.

This is why the Tea Party rose up to take on entrenched incumbents in the Republican Party. Because the only way to push back is to get rid of the Republicans who spent their lives governing like Democrats.

We can’t just keep electing the same stale retreads and wonder why nothing changes. We can’t buckle under the fear of being called “purists” because we know the current crop of GOP isn’t doing the job. It’s not enough to replace Democrats, we have to replace statists within the GOP.

We have to turnover “leadership” from top to bottom, because they set the agenda. Which is why I cringe when people say “we can’t waste time primarying Republicans because that distracts from defeating Democrats.” That logic pretends the GOP doesn’t do stupid and cringeworthy things that undermine the stated cause.

Some Republicans undermine the cause of liberty because they don’t believe in it. Others because they’re afraid. They have to go because the results of keeping them is the same regardless of the motivation.

The worst thing that can happen is for Boehner to remain Speaker. And yet it’s the most likely outcome since the opposition is sparse.

Which means we continue our never-ending quest to push the GOP to the Right. And if Boehner maintains the Speakership…well, for the next two years at least, we’re still screwed.