Exclusive — Carly Fiorina: If John Boehner, Mitch McConnell Don’t Produce ‘They Need to Step Aside’

GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina appears to offer initial support for a measure put forward by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) that would cost Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) the Speakership of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Fiorina said it’s time for Boehner—and his counterpart on the other side of Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—to produce results, or they should lose their jobs. Fiorina told Breitbart News:

I’m frustrated. People worked incredibly hard–tens of thousands of activists across the country spent their time, energy, and money to win this historic majority in the House and a majority in the Senate. Change was promised, but people don’t see that change. Instead, the Pain Capable Unborn Child Act still hasn’t passed Congress, even though it’s the right thing to do and even the politically smart thing to do. It’s a leader’s job to produce results. The leadership in the Senate and the House need to produce results… or they need to step aside.

“If Congressional leaders can’t produce results, they need to step aside,” Fiorina said on the issue of Boehner’s leadership position.

Fiorina has surged since emerging as the clear winner in last Thursday’s undercard debate. As a pro-life conservative, Fiorina said she wouldn’t take a government shutdown off the table in order to defund Planned Parenthood and address the abhorrent undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials allegedly selling aborted baby body parts.

Fiorina exclusively told Breitbart News:

These Planned Parenthood videos have horrified Americans across the country–regardless of party affiliation or whether you are pro-life or pro-choice–and the pressure on Congress will be enormous. This is about the moral foundation of this nation. We have to ask every Democrat how can you continue to support taxpayer funding for an organization that decides how to kill a baby to best harvest its organs?

“This isn’t a political battle,” she added. “This is about saving lives. We now have a majority in both houses. On this issue, I don’t believe we should take any option off the table.”

Now, Fiorina is open to a defunding battle that could result in a government shutdown with regard to Planned Parenthood. But it’s a decidedly different opinion than what she had back in 2013, when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) used the same tactic to aim to defund Obamacare—something that resulted in a government shutdown at the time.

“Everybody could see this train wreck coming. I actually feel badly for John Boehner. I think this is Ted Cruz and President Obama’s shutdown. I think Ted Cruz’s tactics were wrong,” Fiorina said in an interview in 2013 with CNN’s Jake Tapper. The interview recently resurfaced on The Right Scoop blog. “There’s no honor in charging a hill that you know you can’t take, only casualties, although Ted Cruz maybe got name recognition and money along the way. But President Obama wanted this shutdown. And Ted Cruz played right into his hands.”

Fiorina also, in that interview, criticized the conservative members of the House GOP conference.

“Look, John Boehner – the reason I said he has a very difficult task is John Boehner is trying to hold the caucus together,” she said. “And yet there are elements of his caucus that are much more extreme than other elements of the caucus.”

While the tactic which may result in a shutdown over an impasse between Congress and the president—defunding—is similar to the 2013 Cruz-Obamacare battle and the current Planned Parenthood fight that’s approaching, the case can be made that the politics are different in the two cases.

In 2013, there was no GOP majority in the Senate, and the House GOP majority was smaller. Republicans now control both chambers of Congress, so if Republicans can get a bill past a filibuster in the Senate, Republicans can have a battle directly with the executive branch and President Obama. Also, defunding Obamacare—the current president’s signature legislation—is a much more significant undertaking than defunding Planned Parenthood, which could survive without taxpayer subsidies.