Thread: The Dirty Dozen: Twelve thorns in Speaker Boehner’s side

The Dirty Dozen: Twelve thorns in Speaker Boehner’s side
By Molly K. Hooper - 01/17/12 05:30 AM ET

House Republican leaders had an extremely difficult time uniting their members in 2011, but some were far more exasperating than most.

But surprisingly, the most consistent GOP defectors during the last year were not freshmen, according to an analysis conducted by The Hill.

Veteran rank-and-file Republicans, not members of the historic class of 2010, have proven to be a greater challenge to keep in line.

The Hill’s review found that only two of the 12 biggest defectors in the House Republican Conference are freshmen: Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.) and Jeff Duncan (S.C.).

The other 10 are Reps. Ron Paul (Texas), Timothy Johnson (Ill.), Connie Mack (Fla.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), Tom Graves (Ga.), Paul Broun (Ga.), Jason Chaffetz (Utah), Steve King (Iowa), Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Joe Wilson (S.C.). All 12 legislators consistently opposed their leaders at key moments during the House GOP’s first year back in the majority since 2006.

While dealing with a Democratic

-controlled White House and Senate, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has repeatedly told his 242-member conference that he needs the strongest vote possible on major legislation in order to strengthen his hand in bicameral negotiations.

This summer, Boehner personally lobbied GOP members to support his initial deficit-reduction measure. Despite the personal appeals, he couldn’t get the votes. The next morning, Boehner told his colleagues, ““I love you all … I love some of you a little more than others today.”

A revised version of the legislation (the Budget Control Act of 2011, or BCA) subsequently passed the House.

The bills reviewed in The Hill’s analysis included: An eleventh-hour temporary funding measure to stave off a government shutdown, the enacted fiscal 2011 spending bill, the BCA, the enacted BCA of 2011, two separate 2012 appropriations conference reports, the payroll tax cut/unemployment extension/doc fix House bill, extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), reauthorizations of certain provisions of the Patriot Act and patent reform.

A breakdown of the 12 defectors follows.

• Timothy Johnson (Ill.). The Illinois lawmaker, who is facing a challenging reelection, broke with his leadership on nine of the 10 measures studied. (He voted yes on patent reform.) The six-term lawmaker, rarely seen without a phone to his ear or dialing up a constituent in his district, said he is proud of his record of “independence.”

Johnson cited his communication with constituents when asked about the defections. He told The Hill that both parties have a problem that “they talk to each other with Beltway talk. They have their own lingo. They don’t communicate … with the people back on Main Street.”

• Connie Mack (Fla.). The Sunshine State Republican isn’t shy about voting against GOP leaders. He was a firm no on Boehner’s initial deficit-reduction plan, despite intense whipping on that bill. The Senate hopeful only supported his leadership on the payroll tax extension measure that included a provision requiring President Obama to make a decision on the Keystone pipeline by Feb. 21.

• Tom McClintock (Calif.). McClintock backed the bill that averted a government shutdown last spring. Otherwise, the fiscal hawk resisted attempts to win his support for legislation to raise the debt ceiling and extend the payroll tax cut.

• Ron Paul (Texas). The libertarian presidential contender has missed a fair amount of votes while on the hustings, including three of the votes measured in The Hill review. Paul did not vote on the 2011 continuing resolution, the first of two 2012 appropriations conference reports and the payroll tax cut measure. He refused to budge on intensely whipped items, including the BCA, FISA surveillance law extension and the bill to prevent a government shutdown. Paul’s inclusion on this list is not surprising. Republican leaders don’t even bother whipping him, assuming he will vote no.

• Justin Amash (Mich.). The freshman from Michigan, who is a big fan of Paul, routinely votes against leadership. Amash is a vocal critic of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On the eve of a tense House vote on Boehner’s debt bill, Amash told his followers, “I cannot support an increase in the debt limit without the passage of a major structural reform to government, such as a well-structured balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.”

•Paul Broun (Ga.). With the exception of voting for the payroll tax cut, the lawmaker opposed his leadership on nine of the 10 votes. Broun is facing a primary against former Rep. Mac Collins (R-Ga.).

• Tom Graves (Ga.). Graves, who won a special election in 2010 before the November wave, joined Broun and Mack in opposing nine of the 10 bills, with the exception of the payroll tax cut extension. Graves, who was appointed to the powerful Appropriations Committee, bucked his committee chairman on spending measures.

•Jason Chaffetz (Utah). The ambitious Chaffetz opposed his leaders on eight of the 10 bills, supporting only the payroll tax cut extension and the extension of FISA surveillance laws.

• Steve King (Iowa). The Tea Party favorite voted against all but two of the 10 items included in the study. King supported extending the FISA provisions and portions of the Patriot Act.

• Michele Bachmann (Minn.). Joining Paul on the presidential campaign trail, Bachmann missed votes on the first of two 2012 spending conference reports and the payroll tax cut measure, but when she did vote, it was decisively against her leaders. The exceptions were national security measures (FISA and Patriot Act) on which the Intelligence Committee member voted “aye.” There are more than a few Republican members who wouldn’t be disappointed if Bachmann opts not to run for reelection.

•Jeff Duncan (S.C.). The freshman lawmaker supported his leadership in extending FISA and the payroll tax cut. He opposed them on the other eight items.

Duncan told The Hill that “at the end of the day, I have to stop and consider: Did I do everything I could to lessen the negative impact of big government for my children? … That’s why I have consistently had to oppose bills that continued to spend ever greater amounts of borrowed money.”

• Joe Wilson (S.C.). He opposed his leaders at important junctures throughout the year, primarily on fiscal matters. The ardent defense hawk supported the extension of FISA and the Patriot Act, but opposed them on the other items, including trade legislation.



The Dirty Dozen: Twelve thorns in Speaker Boehner

Twelve thorns in Speaker Boehner’s side,and thank goodness for that. I would say this is a guideline to follow

Once hot, Tea Party goes cold
By Josh Lederman - 01/17/12 05:30 AM ET

The Tea Party is falling to pieces.

In presidential, House and Senate races, the Tea Party is struggling to float viable and effective candidates, unify its base and dictate the terms of national discourse on the economy.

It is a harsh comedown for a movement that two years ago sent dozens of its members to Congress, revolutionized conservative grassroots organizing and forced both parties to make the national debt and federal spending their top policy concerns.

“I think the Tea Party’s dying out as the economy’s slowly getting better,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But the movement’s leaders are calling predictions of their demise overblown, arguing they faced the same cynicism and doubts before the 2010 midterm elections.

“The silliness has been to focus on people who wear colonial hats and have funny signs, and God bless them for coming to our rallies,” said Sal Russo, the co-founder and chief strategist for Tea Party Express. “But those are not the ones who caused more Republicans to be elected as state legislators since 1928.”

There are many indications of the Tea Party’s vanishing influence:

• It’s hard to imagine a GOP presidential candidate Tea Partiers could dislike more than Mitt Romney, but they might not have much of a choice.

“The drumbeat is that the Tea Party can’t get behind one candidate. That’s because we have a lot of good candidates,” said Russo of the GOP presidential race.

But with the movement splintered and unable to coalesce behind a single, more conservative candidate, Romney is on the verge of being the only option for Tea Party voters in November — other than President Obama.

And however reluctantly, at least some in the movement seem to have concluded that they’ll take him. Romney won some Tea Party support in Iowa, and took a majority in New Hampshire, according to exit polls. Tea Party kingmaker and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who has said he won’t endorse before South Carolina’s Saturday contest, has been so upbeat about Romney’s chances in his state that some have deemed it a tacit endorsement.

• Support for the Tea Party is ebbing across the country, according to a November 2011 study by the Pew Research Center. At the time of the 2010 midterms, 27 percent of Americans said they agreed with the movement, and 22 percent disagreed. Those numbers are now flipped.

• Headed by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), members of the House in 2010 formed a Tea Party caucus. But while the caucus has about 60 members, it has sat largely dormant, unable to play a prominent role in congressional proceedings.

• The Republican establishment, all too delighted by the Tea Party surge that helped hand it control of the House in 2010, has discovered just how difficult is to govern when a major part of its base places its allegiance elsewhere.

The most recent example was the end of 2011, when Congress debated a payroll tax cut. Tea Partiers in the lower chamber were furious with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the deal he cut. The debacle surrounding its passage gave Democrats the narrative they wanted about Republican intransigence standing in the way of middle-class tax cuts, and Republicans emerged weakened ahead of the 2012 elections.

“Some of them are taking the position of, ‘We were sent here to do a job, and if it means we do the job for two years and then get voted out of office, it’s worth it,’ ” said William Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar and former adviser to President Clinton. “That creates a major problem for the Speaker.”

• There were more than 83,000 mentions of the Tea Party in the news media in 2010; that number dropped to 32,000 in 2011, according to an analysis by the research firm General Sentiment that was obtained by The Hill.

The firm also found that the Tea Party was mentioned about 970,000 times in 2011 in social media, Twitter and the news media. Meanwhile, conversations about economic inequality have partially supplanted the Tea Party’s focus on spending, and Occupy Wall Street picked up almost 8.5 million mentions in the same year.

• In congressional races, where Tea Party candidates were leading the pack in 2010, they are struggling against establishment Republicans in 2012 primary races.

The Tea Party candidate is running behind more centrist Republicans in the open Senate races in Texas and Nebraska. In Indiana and Maine, Tea Party figures hoping to challenge centrist incumbents are straining to gain ground. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) was spared a Tea Party challenge from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R), and former state lawmaker and Tea Party candidate Dan Liljenquist seems a long shot to overtake Hatch.

Part of voters’ reluctance to back Tea Party candidates early this time around might stem from the failed gambles the party took in 2010 with risky candidates like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Sharron Angle in Nevada, both of whom defeated mainstream Republicans in the primary, then lost to Democrats in the general election.

• Tea Party favorite Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) lost the race in December for vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference to Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.), a GOP establishment pick.

The Tea Party has 10 months in which to launch a resurrection of the revolt it initiated two years ago if it aims to remain a relevant and effectual force in American elections. But its leaders say the movement’s triumphs are already evident at every level of government.

“The real winning factor is pretty much everyone is using Tea Party rhetoric. They’re talking about cutting things that have never been cut, eliminating departments that used to be sacred cows,” said Ryan Rhodes, a prominent Tea Party leader in Iowa. “As far as having a champion, the movement hasn’t had time to build one. There’s a lot coming in the future.”




Oh Harry I wouldn't be to sure about that, remember saying it doesn't make it so
Once hot, Tea Party goes cold - TheHill.com




Once hot, Tea Party goes cold - TheHill.com