Chad’s Morning Brief: Democrats Worry About a Post-Boehner House and the U.S. Isn’t Stopping Foreign Fighters

Today on The Chad Hasty Show, the future of Republican leadership in the House and Senate and the government's job attempting to stop fighters from joining ISIS. Plus, many other topics.

Post-Boehner House

Many are wondering what the future will look like with a new Republican House Speaker and with other new Republican leaders. According to The Hill, Democrats hope that the next speaker will be a lot like the old one.

House Democratic leaders are amplifying concerns that governing will only get tougher after Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) steps down.

The lawmakers say they're hopeful that Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the majority leader and current favorite to replace Boehner, will work with President Obama and congressional Democrats to pass bills and keep the government running.

But they're also quick to acknowledge that the next Speaker, whoever that is, will face intense pressure to cater to the conservative Republicans who drove Boehner's resignation or risk suffering a similar fate.

"It's disturbing that Speaker Boehner was somehow not conservative enough for many of our Republican colleagues. But let's be clear: This is not a Speaker Boehner problem ... this is a Republican Conference problem," Rep. Ben Ray Luján (N.M), head of the Democrats' campaign arm, said Tuesday. "And the next Speaker will face the same stark choice as Boehner: go along with the extreme base or get run over by them."

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) echoed that message. She characterized McCarthy as "an amiable man" with "great leadership skills," but nonetheless warned that he'll be facing "a rump caucus in the Republican Party ... that is turning into a cancer."

"They want their pound of flesh, and if they don't get their pound of flesh they will shut down this government," Speier said. "And Kevin McCarthy will be faced with the same challenges that Speaker Boehner has been faced with: trying to assuage them and never assuaging them enough."

Boehner's surprise resignation Friday came after years of sparring with a right flank that attacked his leadership style as too quick to compromise with Obama and Democrats, particularly on spending issues.

Policy-wise, I don't see much of a difference between Boehner and McCarthy. However, I do think that McCarthy will be more open to conservatives than Boehner. At least it will probably start off that way. Republicans and Democrats though probably won't see much of a difference publically.

Foreign Fighters to ISIS

According to CNN, the government has failed to stop the flow of fighters to ISIS.

The U.S. is losing the battle to stop Americans from traveling abroad to enlist in ISIS, a bipartisan congressional task force concluded in a report released Tuesday.

More than 25,000 foreigners have flocked to war-torn Syria and Iraq since 2011 to fight with Islamist terrorist groups including ISIS, according to U.S. government estimates noted in the report.

"Despite concerted efforts to stem the flow, we have largely failed to stop Americans from traveling overseas to join jihadists," the task force determined in its report.

In just the last nine months, more than 7,000 foreign fighters have swelled the ranks of those radical militant groups waging war and committing atrocities in Iraq and Syria. And while most recruits continue to come from the Middle East and North Africa, thousands of Westerners have traveled to fight in the region -- including more than 250 Americans, more than half of which have left in the last year.

Those figures prompted the eight-member task force, commissioned by the House Homeland Security Committee and including three House Democrats, to call for an overhaul of the U.S. strategy to stem the flow and threat of foreign fighters in what the task force called "the largest global convergence of jihadists in history."

"We have to have a strategy to deal with this: both a military strategy abroad, a political solution, but also a prevention strategy here in the United States to prevent this threat," Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference announcing the reports conclusions Tuesday.

Yet the administration seems to treat this threat very casually. There is a disconnect it seems that I hope will not come back to haunt us.

These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard on our KFYO YouTube page after the show and online at kfyo.com.