Tag Archives: House of Representatives

Closing ranks in the House

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Robert Costa notes Paul Ryan’s smooth transition back into “team player” mode, especially in regards to House Speaker John Boehner:

As Ryan has mulled his future, Boehner has welcomed him back into the fold. They’re not buddies, but they’re working together behind the scenes as Boehner negotiates with the White House.

The benefits for both men are clear: Ryan keeps his head down during a negotiation that may end badly, and focuses on the big policy picture as he looks, perhaps, toward the 2016 presidential campaign. Boehner gets more leeway, because if Ryan is happy, the speaker’s critics (who are close with Ryan) tend to be more reserved. Though a handful of conservative members can’t stand Boehner, they implicitly take their cues from Ryan.

Republican unity is a figment of the Times’ imagination

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Contra the post immediately before this one, New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer has a piece today talking up Speaker of the House John Boehner’s supposed “strong backing” in Congress’ lower chamber:

With a daunting fiscal crisis looming and conservatives outside the House torching him at every turn, Speaker John A. Boehner might be assumed to have a shaky hold on his gavel. Instead, it appears he is enjoying the broadest support of his tumultuous two-year speakership from House Republicans.

As Mr. Boehner digs in for a tense fiscal confrontation with President Obama, the strong embrace from a broad spectrum of the rank and file may empower him as he tries to strike a deal on spending cuts and tax increases that spares the country a recession, without costing Republicans too much in terms of political principle.

The problem is, nowhere in the article does Steinhauer present even a reasonable facsimile of evidence supporting her hypothesis. At one point she writes that “member after member spoke in support of” Boehner at a private House Republican meeting, and elsewhere quotes from a handful of post-election chastened Republicans who are now more willing to accept compromise in theory (if not in practice). These vignettes, paired with the observation that Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor have signed onto Boehner’s $800 billion proposal — a brief moment of agreement on an issue on which even Republicans in Steinhauer’s article admit they have virtually no leverage — constitute the near-totality of Steinhauer’s thesis.

Must be a slow news day over at the Grey Lady, so they decided to concoct some of their own.

Throwing Boehner out with the bathwater

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Jeffery A. Jenkins considers the possibility of a conservative Republican mutiny against House Speaker John Boehner:

The most radical suggestion, offered by Ned Ryun on the conservative blog Red State, is that a small group of Republicans signal their unhappiness with Boehner by voting against him in the speakership vote on the House floor.  Ryun argues that if 16 Republicans abstain from voting for Boehner for Speaker, based on the assumption that there will be 233 Republicans in attendance when the 113th House convenes in January, then he will fail to receive a majority – and, in time (assuming repeated, inconclusive speakership balloting), the Republican Conference will be forced to choose a new speakership nominee, one more amenable to the preferences of the dissident faction (and, presumably, conservatives more generally).

(One aside: Ryun argues that dissident members should simply abstain from voting.  But the rule for electing Speakers has been interpreted differently over time. At times the requirement has been a majority of all members-elect, and at other times it has been a majority of all members present and voting “for a person by name.”  The most recent interpretation has been the latter. For example, in the 105th Congress, Newt Gingrich was elected Speaker with 216 votes, which constituted a majority of all members present and voting for a person by name, but not a majority of all members-elect.  So Ryun’s strategy, to be safe, should direct dissidents to cast their protest votes for one of their own, rather than abstain.)

The hidden election

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Today’s Bloomberg has an analysis of what voters were trying to say this election. (Most likely: Stop. Talking. Both of you.) This part was, to me, the most striking:

Any resolution of the negotiations is likely to have more of a Democratic stamp, with the party’s victories this year extending beyond Obama’s re-election.

Democrats expanded their majority in the Senate by two members in a year in which 23 of the 33 Senate seats up for election were held by the party, meaning it was vulnerable to significant losses.

While Republicans maintained a majority in the House, Democrats picked up seats. And as of yesterday, Associated Press tallies showed Democratic House candidates got about 900,000 more votes nationally than Republican contenders. Republicans are able to keep control of the chamber because the geography of House district boundaries favors the party.

I’d read earlier that the popular vote differential had been somewhere around 500,000 votes, but apparently now it’s almost one million. It’s pretty incredible that our weird gerrymandering-happy electoral system produces a House of Representatives in which there are now approximately 36 more Republicans than Democrats — when voters actually cast almost one million more ballots for Democrats than for the GOP.

Similarly, the note about the Senate — that of the 33 seats, 23 were held by Democrats, and the Dems actually managed to pick up two seats — puts in perspective just how good a night November 6th was for Team Blue.