Why Homeland Security crisis is about much more than John Boehner (+video)
If Republicans were going to make good on their promise of showing they can govern now that they run the House and Senate, the drama of the past week was always likely, and perhaps inevitable.
The question now is what will happen from here. The coming days will give an interesting indication of what the hard-fought Republican majority might actually amount to over the next two years.
The current flashpoint is the bid to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The outlines of the debate are familiar in the House of Representatives' post-2010 tea party era. The conservative wing is pushing Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio to use Congress's fiscal levers to punish the Obama administration. In this case, it wants to use the DHS bill to try to neuter President Obama's November executive action to defer deportation for nearly five million undocumented immigrants.
But Mr. Boehner doesn't really want to do it. Yes, on one hand, it is a topic that will motivate the very base that gave Republicans control of Congress. That's good, from Boehner's perspective. But he also knows it's bad politics, because the ploy will never work. He doesn't have the votes to get the bill to Mr. Obama's desk, and he knows it would be vetoed even if he did.
Which brings D.C. squarely back to where it was before November's election: The tea party acting as a filibuster on its own caucus.
On Friday, conservatives once again threw the House into chaos when they refused to go along with Boehner, who all but threw in the towel on the Republicans' DHS funding scheme. (Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell had already given up the fight earlier in the week.)
This is what the tea party does. It doesn't have the numbers to pass legislation, but it does have the power to obstruct. Since tea party doctrine holds that obstruction of a bad bill is far preferable to concessions to make it marginally better, members are just doing what they were elected to do.
But for Boehner, the stakes are higher. Before last fall, Republicans could always blame the Democrat-led Senate when things went wrong. Now, that excuse is gone. Which means, if Republican leaders are serious about passing legislation designed to show the House and Senate can work together to get things done, they have to consider doing an end run around the tea party.
It's not a question of partisanship or ideology. It's matter of math, and it's been plain since before last November.
The midterm elections gave Boehner a few more moderate Republicans, but not enough to trump his conservative wing. To pass legislation his conservatives don't like, he needs to rely on Democrats.
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Why Homeland Security crisis is about much more than John Boehner (+video)