New House rule cuts Gohmert’s airtime on C-SPAN cameras
WASHINGTON — It turns out Louie Gohmert likes the “Louie Gohmert rule” — at least a little.
The Republican congressman from Tyler, a conservative, tea party supporter of President Donald Trump, is best known in Congress for his prolific speechifying on the House floor, often after the close of business when the chamber is mostly empty — except for C-SPAN’s cameras.
He has held forth on topics ranging from international terrorism to Capitol barbecue restrictions. His most famous, a 2010 speech recounting claims of foreign “terror babies” taking advantage of U.S. birthright citizenship laws, has become legend.
But now, he might have to ration his thoughts.
Under new House rules rolled out by the Democratic leadership, so-called special-order speeches will be limited to one a week. The privileges are not transferable.
The change ends an era of freewheeling speeches by lawmakers with agendas or axes to grind, until now afforded limitless opportunities to talk alone and without interruption on the House floor.
Gohmert, who has been in Congress since 2005, has emerged as one of the chief practitioners of the art, logging hundreds of C-SPAN video clips, some an hour in duration or more.
According to the Washington
Examiner, Gohmert logged almost 29 hours speaking on the House floor in 2014. Coincidentally or not, he unsuccessfully challenged John Boehner for the position of House speaker the following year.
If new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi aimed the new rule at him, Gohmert said, he was not the only one. Naming names, he specifically pointed the finger at Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who is also a past chair of the Democratic National Committee.
“The new rule has actually been great,” Gohmert said in a statement. “Speaker Pelosi may have meant it to stop me from doing what Debbie WassermanSchultz did for two years with the ‘30 Somethings’ who claimed time night after night in 2005-6, while the Republicans rarely ever used their time at all.”
Gohmert said he was merely trying to claim equal time for conservative opinion.
“Since January of 2007, I have encouraged other Republicans to speak during our allotted time on the House Floor,” he said. “However, if no one else signed up, I’d do what I could to get back to the floor to speak during our allotted time. That opportunity is precious to relay meaningful information that alt-left or mainstream media will not provide.”
At bottom, he sees the rule change as a form of flattery.
“If Speaker Pelosi thought I was hurting the Republican Party, she surely would want me speaking every night,” he said. “Obviously that’s not the case. In fact, one Democrat friend said, ‘It’s the Louie Gohmert rule’ — which to me is quite a compliment.”