Infighting Splits House Republicans

[Tennessee Hillbilly]

"The GOP leadership is dealing with an unprecedented level of frustration in running the House, according to conversations with more than a dozen aides and lawmakers in and around leadership. Leadership is talking past each other. The conference is split by warring factions. And influential outside groups are fighting them. The chaos has led to a sense of stalemate for House Republicans, who have been in the majority since 2011."
...
"Speaker John Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy are plagued by a conference split into two groups. In one camp are stiff ideologues who didn’t extract any lesson from Mitt Romney’s loss and are only looking to slash spending and defund President Barack Obama’s health care law at every turn. In the other are lawmakers who are aligned with Cantor, who is almost singularly driving an agenda which is zeroed in on family issues."
...
"Boehner seems more focused on passing big pieces of legislation like hiking the debt ceiling and extending government funding, sometimes drawing flak for having to rely on Democrats to move these bills over the finish line."

Read more at
[link:http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/house-in-chaos-republican-leadership-eric-cantor-90803.html?hp=t1_3|

[TxDemChem]

1. I do love a good GOP fight

Can't wait to see what happens next

[geek tragedy]

2. Yet Obama keeps losing policy fights to them. nt

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. He hasn't lost them all

He "won" the Fiscal Cliff fight. He gambled badly on the Sequester but there were enough teabaggers that wanted it and no real motivation for the Republicans to repeal it and the Senate wasn't going to accept what the Republicans wanted in order to repeal it so it went into effect. The procedural defeat on the gun background check bill in the Senate was certainly a blow but that wasn't being fought in the house. Not sure if the Republicans will be richly rewarded by their efforts to ensure that the airports are spared the pain of sequester when so many other people are getting screwed by the sequester but that was overwhelmingly bipartisan too, so......... He's basically dealing with irrational people and trying to keep the federal government intact and functional. Not really sure what he can do until or unless the Republicans wake up and stop taking crazy/stupid pills every day and/or the public votes out large numbers of Republicans in 2014.

[geek tragedy]

7. He had every piece of imaginable leverage in the fiscal cliff fight.

He didn't need to do anything.

He lost the Debt Ceiling showdown, and he's getting his ass handed to him on the Sequester.

And he threw in an offer to cut Social Security and Medicare, thus screwing his own party in the 2014 elections.

He should try to earn their hate.

[Sunlei]

3. Speaker John Boehner does a VERY CRAPPY JOB, republicans should have picked a real leader.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

5. I don't want an EFFECTIVE Republican House Speaker

but he's probably as *good* and close to *sane* as we're probably going to get until the Republicans are back in the minority.

[Sunlei]

6. He's 3rd in line to be President! The man is NOT leadership material.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

8. I agree that he's not

but who else would you have in his place- as long as the Republicans are in control? Cantor? Some fanatical teabagger? Unfortunately, the Dems don't have any control over who leads the House right now.....