OPINION:
John Boehner kept his speakership Tuesday, but not by enough to quiet the rebellion on a slow bubble in the ranks. His victory was much like that of the country preacher who wins a congregational vote of confidence by a margin of 38 to 37 and declares the church united.
Mr. Boehner’s margin was a little larger than that, but the numbers are nevertheless deceptive. He needed 205 votes to win and managed 216 of the 409 members present. Many Democrats — he’s their speaker, too — were in New York for the funeral of Mario Cuomo and others dared not brave the terrors of an inch or so of the snow, a blizzard by Washington’s standards, that fell through the night. Twenty-four Republicans voted for someone else and one Republican voted “present.” If only 11 more votes had been cast for someone else a second round of voting would have been required, and the speaker likely would have been in serious trouble.
The speaker could take genuine pleasure in winning his third term as speaker, and we join those offering congratulations. But Mr. Boehner’s troubles will continue, and he will have to rely on Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats for the votes to get certain “must-pass” legislation to the president’s desk. A bit of a humiliation for a speaker with a comfortable majority in the ranks behind him.
“He’s the weakest speaker in decades, so this will further cement the dysfunction ahead on several key cliffs that are coming this week,” a gleeful Democratic leadership aide told The Hill, the Capitol Hill daily. “It’s not good news for them and it means we’re going to have another series of manufactured crises.” Gleeful or not, the analysis is on the mark.
The day should have been one of unalloyed triumph and celebration for the Grand Old Party, and indeed it was a day of triumph, but some of the bubbles in the bubbly had gone a little flat. Mr. Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the leader of the new Republican majority in the Senate, do not have the wind of an enthusiastic majority at their backs. Many in their ranks are confused, thinking the message of the voters in November was as sharp and as clear as a fire bell in the night, and angry that the message they hear from the leadership now is that the important thing for the party is not so much to redeem campaign promises but to show that it is “responsible” and “ready to lead.” Often in the past this has meant bowing to a Democratic definition of what’s responsible and what’s not.
Mr. Boehner’s friends in the ranks think the protest votes against him were “unseemly,” if not disloyal, and spoiled the new beginning in Congress. “To me it’s unprofessional,” says Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma. “We should be talking about the Keystone pipeline, fixes to Obamacare, trade deals, some of the areas where we can co-operate, some of the areas where we oppose the president. Instead we’re talking about this [protest] on the very first day of the Republican Congress.”
The Republicans in Congress can talk about all that, too, but if the party’s leadership in both the House and the Senate are wise, as it must be to succeed in an environment that will continue to be contentious and hostile, it will pay attention to this protest.
These are contentious times, and likely to remain that way for a long time. Most of the newcomers to both House and Senate did not come to Washington to “go along to get along,” as newcomers to Congress were told to do in the past. Many of them are a little rough around the edges, unsophisticated in the ways of Washington. Being that way is why and how they got here, and theirs is the fresh blood the capital always needs.
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