House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) dismissed a rank-and-file lawmaker’s attempt to strip him of his gavel as an inconsequential maneuver Wednesday.

Representative Mark Meadows (R., N.C.), who temporarily lost a subcommittee chairmanship for voting against leadership but had it restored after conservative allies defended him, filed the motion to vacate the chair — which would depose Boehner as speaker — yesterday evening.

“This is one member,” Boehner told reporters Wednesday after he met with prominent House conservatives. “I’ve got broad support amongst my colleagues, and frankly, it isn’t even deserving of a vote.” Boehner has the power to grant or deny the vote, because Meadows chose not to file his motion as a “privileged resolution” that would have required up-or-down action from his colleagues.

Meadows’s move caught several of his closest ideological allies by surprise. “News to me,” one lawmaker replied when asked if he’d heard about it. “Haha, no,” said another via text message.

Boehner defeated another poorly organized coup attempt in January, but it was a painful process for everyone involved at the time. “People — especially activists — hate Boehner,” one Republican who backed the speaker said at the time. “It’s the most unpopular vote most of us will ever take.”

#related#And although the speaker undoubtedly commands the support of the majority of House Republicans, the requirement that a speaker receive the majority of votes in the House makes such challenges to his leadership riskier than they appear on the surface.

“If all the Dems vote to vacate and all Boehner ‘no’ votes from January vote to vacate then you only need about five more votes and he is gone,” one House Republican says. “If the scoreboard got to 210 or so, McCarthy loyalists would swoop in and finish Boehner off. And you probably wouldn’t even need that.”

— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.