They weren't trying to actually unseat him.....they needed to have other names in the 'hat', so to speak in order to make sure he DID get the votes to stay put or the Dems would have had the chance to put Pelosi back on the list of choices. Interviews I've seen show that, yes, they aren't all happy with Boehner, but he's better than Pelosi so they made the decision to 'hedge the bet' and Republicans won. Boehner didn't have to fend off the Tea Party as the article suggests because if you look at the vote count, the two who 'ran' against him didn't get anything even close to a 'real' vote count and didn't expect to.

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