Rep. Rohrabacher says Boehner should be 'removed' from post if he pushes Senate immigration bill

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher isn’t mincing words over his concern about the Senate immigration bill. The California Republican says House Speaker John Boehner should be booted from his leadership role if he allows the Senate version to come to the House for a vote.

Conservatives have been pushing Boehner to adhere to a principle under which the speaker only calls votes on bills that have majority support from the majority party -- in this case, the Republicans. This is sometimes referred to as the "Hastert Rule," named after former House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

The move is made to keep the minority party from passing bills with the assistance of a small number of members from the other side. It takes 218 votes to pass a bill in the House.

“If Speaker Boehner moves forward and permits this to come to a vote even though the majority of the Republicans in the House – and that’s if they do – oppose whatever it is that’s coming to a vote, he should be removed as Speaker,” Rohrabacher said Monday during a radio interview on World Net Daily.

Rohrabacher went a step further and said he’d consider it a “betrayal of the Republicans members of the House and a betrayal of the Republicans throughout the country.”

Last week, Boehner said in an interview with ABC News that he would not rule out pushing a bill through without the support of a majority of his party.

His latest comments nevertheless follow words of caution from the speaker about the Senate bill.

On May 23, Boehner and other GOP leaders issued a press release declaring, “while we applaud the progress made by our Senate colleagues, there are numerous ways in which the House will approach the issue differently.”

The Republican leaders cautioned that “the House remains committed to fixing our broken immigration system, but we will not simply take up and accept the bill that is emerging in the Senate if it passes. Rather, through regular order, the House will work its will and produce its own legislation.”

Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report.