House Speaker John Boehner’s resignation shocked many inside the beltway, but there is nothing new about leadership shakeups which rumble the Capitol at least once a decade and in many cases more frequently than that, often as the result of disappointing election results.
But this jolt to the leadership is different, say Capitol Hill insiders, because it grew from discontent among a faction of conservatives looking to push the GOP in a new direction, even though the party won big at the ballot box in 2014.
“We have seen major shakeups before, usually based on the outcome of elections, but this one is significant because it’s a result of a group of members unhappy with the strategic direction of the leadership,” GOP consultant Ron Bonjean, a former top House and Senate Republican leadership aide, told the Washington Examiner.
Boehner told his GOP rank-and-file that he’ll step aside on Oct. 30 to spare the House turmoil caused by a conservative faction aiming to oust him from his leadership post.
The conservative group, many of them elected in Tea Party wave elections in the past decade, have been eager to push out Boehner, who they say does not fight hard enough for causes important to the right that were ardently promised on the campaign trail, such as repealing Obamacare and defunding Planned Parenthood, a women’s health services and abortion provider.
Boehner’s departure prompted a leadership scramble to fill not only the post of Speaker, but also the three lower leadership positions of majority leader, majority whip and conference chair.
It’s the second time in 15 months the House leadership has been turned on its head.
In August, Majority Leader Eric Cantor was forced to step down, but only as a result of a surprise primary loss in his Virginia district. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, of California, was elected to replace him, allowing newcomer Steve Scalise, R-La., to ascend to the leadership post of majority whip.
Some longtime Capitol Hill insiders say the House GOP is now facing turbulence not seen since the days of former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who weathered one coup attempt by his rank-and-file before being forced out days after losing seats in the November 1998 election.
Boehner has been very successful at increasing the GOP House numbers, helping the party win back the House majority in 2010 and overseeing a 13-seat increase in the 2014 election.
Among the newly elected members are some of the conservatives who tried to push Boehner out of office.
“We’ve never had a rogue group like this,” said former Rep. Bob Livingston, of Louisiana.
Livingston is all too familiar with coups, having led the rebellion that forced out Gingrich after the House GOP suffered a net loss of five seats in the midterm election during President Bill Clinton’s second term.
At the time, House Republicans faulted Gingrich over the tactics he employed in challenging Clinton to reduce government funding, which resulted in a Christmas-time government shutdown and muddled the GOP’s message.
Livingston said current House conservatives aren’t going to change much by ousting Boehner because Senate Democrats will block legislation or President Obama will use his veto pen.
“People are justifiably upset that Washington has not been adhering to the goals set out when we took the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, and we didn’t reverse everything Obama put in place,” said Livingston, now a lobbyist. “But, that is because the system didn’t allow it.”
Conservatives tell the Examiner they simply want a bigger voice in the process in order to help advance the priorities of their constituents, who light up the Capitol switchboard and send thousands of emails demanding Republicans fulfill the promises they made in November.
“It’s really up to the leadership to define what the goals are,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who in July introduced a resolution to depose Boehner, told the Examiner. “When you make statements that we are going to fight tooth and nail and we don’t fight tooth and nail, that creates expectations that have to be fulfilled.”
This article appears in the Oct. 5 edition of the Washington Examiner magazine.
