Decline of House GOP Influence

Robert Costa had a good piece yesterday on the self proclaimed "Gang of Six" house conservatives who are attempting to build momentum to block immigration reform:

King and his crew are not driving the negotiations, and they increasingly feel like outsiders within their own party. “The meetings of the Gang of Eight and the secret meetings in the House of Representatives — the people who have been standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law haven’t been invited to those meetings,” King tells the assembled group of reporters. The other huddlers — Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Lou Barletta (Pa.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Louie Gohmert (Texas), and Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.) — nod and grimace. 

I think we will all look back on 2011-12 as the high point of house Republican obstruction. As I have written about before, the house Republicans were quite successful at preventing further fiscal stimulus, slowing overall government spending, and making climate change legislation a non-starter.

But from the very beginning, Boehner has been steadily losing power. Conservatives were constantly concerned that he was going to "sell them out" during negotiations with the White House. Over time, the White House lost faith that he was actually speaking for the house conservatives and could deliver votes. This culminated in a series of dangerous budget standoffs and a mechanism intended to force bipartisan agreement--sequestration--actually being enacted.

Over the past 20 years, conservatives moved the Republican party to the right, encouraged discipline, and consolidated power within the leadership. To do this, they primaried Rockefeller Republicans, placed term limits on subcommittee and committee chairmanships, and instituted the "Hastert Rule"--a policy of the Republican leadership to not bring a bill to the floor unless it had the support of the majority of the Republican caucaus. The idea was to prevent legislation from being passed with mostly Democratic votes.

This came to a head at the end of 2012, when John Boehner, in order to avoid going over the "fiscal cliff", allowed a bill to come to the floor that did not have the support of the majority of the Republican caucaus. The bill passed with mostly Democratic votes, and conservatives flipped out (even though it was technically a tax cut for all but the highest-income Americans). Since that vote, Boehner has brought a few more items to the floor that did not have majority Republican support (Violence Against Women Act, Hurricane Sandy Relief). This has created the precedent for what is now being called the "Boehner Rule":

However, sometimes the Republican leadership in the House really does want something to pass. For these bills, as George Washington University’s Sarah Binder has said, the speaker has instituted a “new Boehner Rule”: Make the Senate go first. After all, given the 60 vote Senate (thanks to filibusters on everything) and a 55 Senator Democratic majority, nothing can get through that chamber without support from both parties. That is, it will generally require some sort of deal between most or all of the Democrats and at least some of the more moderate Republicans. After a bill passes in the Senate, Speaker Boehner calls up that product for a vote and, at least so far, has been able to get a similar result in the House—that is, lots of Democrats and enough Republicans to put it over the top. Hastert Rule violated, replaced by the Boehner Rule.

Furthermore, in order to mollify conservatives, Boehner has agreed to stop negotiating with Obama. The hardline Republicans love this, but in reality it cuts the house GOP out of the legislative process. Now major pieces of legislation are hammered out by bipartisan-minded Senators (Manchin-Toomey, Gang of Eight), passed through the Senate, and then sent over to the house.

The question is will Boehner allow a vote on these two major Senate bills? He's in a real bind. On the one hand, these deals are to the left of a hypothetical deal negotiated by Obama and Boehner (who is further to the right than most Republican senators). On the other hand, he has committed himself to not negotiating with Obama. In 2011-12 he was able to try to spin breakdowns in negotiations as the product of Obama's unwillingness to compromise. But once these bills have been passed (in a bipartisan fashion) by the Senate, he can't really make this argument.

In the Costa article, Michelle Bachman is quoted as saying “why aren’t we just introducing one bill that says we need to fully secure the borders?” This is her plan. Ignore public opinion, avoid the politically possible, and pass bills through the house that will never pass the Senate.

But Boehner is more politically savvy than she is, and recognizes that refusing to grant a vote to a Senate-approved measure will make the house Republicans look even more obstructionist and could be very damaging during the mid-terms. Obama has capitalized on Boehner's dillema, by framing the issue rhetorically around the idea that "they deserve a vote".

Its begun to appear that house conservatives have undermined their own influence. By failing to support Boehner's efforts to bargain with Obama, they have created a very challenging position for the Republican leadership. Either accept the obstructionist label and refuse to allow a vote, or let it pass with mostly Democratic votes.