Week three of GOP energy protest starts small

House Republicans returned to their core group of protesters Monday to begin their third week of holding mock sessions on the floor to object to Congress adjourning for its August recess.

Reps. Tom Price (R-Ga.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.) — who helped begin the protests on Aug. 1 — led a group of eight House Republicans to the floor on Monday to continue what the group is now calling the “American town hall meeting.”

{mosads}They repeated their refrain that they are refusing to return to their districts until Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) returns to Washington to reconvene the House and give the GOP a vote on its energy plan, which includes offshore drilling.

And just days after Democratic leaders began calling on Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio) to apologize for what they said was an inappropriate suggestion that “the American people are gonna hang [Pelosi],” Republicans continued to hammer away at the Speaker of the House for, among other things, going on tour to promote her new book, Know Your Power.

“If Speaker Pelosi wonders why her book tour is such a failure, I have a suggestion for her next book. It will be well read. If she will write the book How I Ruined the World’s Greatest Economy, it’ll sell like hotcakes,” said Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) at the morning press conference.

With regard to the "hanging" remark, Boehner spokesman Steve Forde said the lawmaker “used a figure of speech to reflect the frustration Americans feel every time they fill up at the pump.”

The handful of Republicans then began taking turns speaking to tour groups being led onto the House floor by GOP staff and those tourists watching from the public galleries. By 11 a.m., close to a hundred people were waiting outside the Republican cloakroom to be led onto the floor.