House GOP’s ‘War of the Roses’

With the very public defeat for conservative House Republicans who wanted to defund President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, the family dysfunction has boiled over into a public scene — and many Republicans say they’re fed up with uncompromising insurgents for disrupting the party’s unity.

“It is huge,” Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., said when asked to describe the scale and emotion of the frustration. “It is a different dynamic right now.”

“This is like the War of the Roses,” added a senior Republican House aide.

The Republican leadership turned to overwhelming Democratic support to pass an appropriation for the Department of Homeland Security. The bill funds the department through Sept. 30 and strips out language that had passed the House in January and would have prohibited funding for the president’s executive action legalizing 4.1 million illegal immigrants. Some 167 Republicans voted against Tuesday’s version of the bill.

House conservatives are not alone in believing Obama’s actions to be constitutionally questionable. In February a federal court temporarily enjoined the administration from carrying out the plan. Conservative insurgents had hoped to use the House’s constitutional power over spending to put another check on the president. They are unhappy with leadership over the changes to the Homeland Security appropriation.

But now many House Republicans are just as fed up with those insurgents. Some say they are being jerked around by a distinct but lately powerful Tea Party minority.

Brewing tension between House conservatives and pragmatists exploded during Friday’s embarrassing defeat of legislation that would have funded homeland security for three more weeks while Republicans plotted their next move in the push to stop Obama’s “executive amnesty.”

On Thursday, House conservatives spoke in favor of the plan during a closed-door conference meeting, according to sources present. By Friday’s vote, they had reversed, scuttling the strategy and leaving their conference grasping for viable options. Republicans had to settle for a one-week continuing resolution to avoid a partial DHS shutdown, and even that only passed because Democrats supported it.

Further fueling the fire was a new proposal, floated by right-leaning Republicans this week, to fund DHS for two more weeks after this week, essentially returning to the three-week plan they abandoned on Friday. This episode, the latest in a string of Tea Party-engineered implosions that have plagued GOP leaders since 2011, has left House Republicans fuming and demanding that control be reasserted over what they say is a vocal minority of their conference.

Although House Republicans voted overwhelmingly against the Homeland Security appropriation Tuesday, it is estimated that the core group of very committed conservatives numbers no more than 25 to 35. GOP moderates attributed Tuesday’s lopsided vote, in which about two-thirds of House Republicans opposed the bill, to Republicans signaling to their conservative base by making safe votes against a bill that, thanks to Democratic votes, was a shoo-in.

Acknowledging the breakdown within the caucus, Speaker John Boehner of Ohio Tuesday told House Republicans during a private meeting that he “and your entire leadership team are going to redouble our efforts to listen and find our way forward together,” according to a source in the room. But it doesn’t appear that Boehner’s team or anyone else in the GOP conference has any idea how to fix things.

“It’s ripening,” said one House Republican, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about the feud. “How do you get out of it? … I don’t know.”

Conservative pragmatists emphasize that divisions are far more complicated than a simple matter of conservatives versus centrists.

A major complaint is that Tea Party insurgents aren’t participating in the legislative process, when their concerns or amendments might be considered. Rather, they wait until legislation hits the floor and then complain that it is not conservative enough, killing House Republicans’ ability to move anything forward. That happened on an education reform bill leadership had to pull from the floor last week after about three-dozen Freedom Caucus members balked.

Some House Republicans formed the Freedom Caucus in January to maximize conservatives’ influence. These members are typically opposed to leadership’s plans and believe the Republican Study Committee, a caucus formed in 1973 to influence legislation, has become too accommodating.

Many Republicans, including rank and file members far from the centers of leadership, have long been frustrated with this crowd. But this is the first time they’ve agitated to have the matter addressed. Indeed, some House Republicans have been meeting privately in small groups to figure out a resolution. So far, there is no consensus. The move by American Action Network, the political nonprofit linked to Boehner, to run ads targeting Republicans who oppose Boehner’s initiatives received mixed reviews. Some believe action like that is long overdue, others worry that it could make matters worse.

Some House Republicans believe leadership needs to bring the hammer to members who aren’t team players. Others, Boehner in particular, say retribution is counterproductive. There is no consensus. Rep. Devin Nunes of California, chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, has been among the few Republicans to air his complaints against insurgent colleagues publicly and pointedly. But his views, expressed in a lengthy and sometimes mocking statement over the weekend, are echoed privately among many House Republicans.

“I applaud the GOP leadership for bringing good bills to the floor even if they don’t have the votes to pass. I have long advocated this strategy. I also applaud the roughly 200 GOP Members who are consistently in the arena – on the House floor – trying to advance the conservative agenda,” Nunes said.

“I prefer to be in the arena voting than trying to placate a small group of phony conservative Members who have no credible policy proposals and no political strategy to stop Obama’s lawlessness,” Nunes continued. “While conservative leaders are trying to move the ball up the field, these other members sit in exotic places like basements of Mexican restaurants and upper levels of House office buildings, seemingly unaware that they can’t advance conservatism by playing fantasy football with their voting cards.”

On Tuesday Boehner and his Republican allies scored a major win over the insurgents, pushing through a funding bill that delivers everything the president’s party — which is now in the minority in both chambers of Congress — wanted. The battle to reverse Obama’s executive immigration order through the power of the purse is over, and the matter is now in the hands of the federal courts, which have temporarily halted the administration’s action on constitutional grounds.

Some pragmatic conservatives were disappointed by the outcome, although they tend to blame the Senate more than Boehner. Senate Democrats unified behind Obama’s executive order despite previous misgivings. Senate Republicans showed little appetite to use homeland security funds as leverage to attempt to force the president to back down. Opinion polls indicated that Republicans would have shouldered most of the blame if funding for the 14-year-old Department of Homeland Security lapsed, a fear made more acute in the aftermath of multiple terrorist attacks in Europe and heightened anxiety about the possibility of terror strikes in the United States.

Insurgent conservatives were furious, accusing Boehner of selling them out after vowing to fight Obama’s executive order “tooth and nail.” Even pragmatic Republicans disgusted with Tea Party tactics concede that there is simply no trust between House GOP leadership and the party’s insurgent wing.

“He just caved,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., told reporters Tuesday after Boehner announced his intention to move a clean DHS bill during the morning conference meeting. “‘Tooth and nail’ ended in there today.”