Will Boehner Bone Up On Leadership?

What’s
Wrong Today:

Now that
the Senate’s passed an immigration bill, everyone wants to know what the House
is going to do, and there are a few theories about what happens next. Speaker
John Boehner, at a briefing last Thursday, said the House
would not take up the Senate bill and would pass its own bill, but only if a
majority of Republicans backed it. Although he didn’t say it, that is known as
the “Hastert Rule”. From the Wrongologist in March:

In the House, under the Hastert Rule, the
Speaker is reluctant to present a bill that doesn’t have the support of a
majority of his party. That means that a minority of the House can prevent any
bill from being heard.

Although Republicans
hold 234 seats in congress and just 218 votes are required to pass legislation,
the question is, are there are more than 17 Republicans who will refuse to
support any Immigration Bill? The answer is certainly yes.

The question is: Can Mr. Boehner lead his caucus?

There are doubters. Roll
Call reports that the Club for Growth and Heritage Action for America are
out to depose Mr. Boehner:

Leaders
of both conservative advocacy groups stop short of saying so, but they are clearly
clamoring for a House Republican leader more closely aligned with their
principles. And they are doing
everything they can to steer the House GOP membership in their direction.

Mr.
Boehner has had continuing problems leading his caucus. Recently, the
Senate-passed Farm Bill failed
to pass the House. The vote wasn’t even particularly close: 234-195 against passage, as 62 Republicans voted against the bill.

Remember
Boehner’s Plan B? It was Mr. Boehner’s fiscal cliff tax proposal that in
December 2012 would have extended the Bush tax cuts on income for those who
earn $1 million or less. Even on the day of the expected vote, he said it would
pass, but it failed to win even enough support in the Republican Conference and
the vote was canceled.

Of the 234 House Republicans,
48 are members
of the Tea Party Caucus and 4 representatives are former members of the
Tea Party caucus. 201 members are Democrats. So, a majority of the House – 253 of 435
members – are either Tea Party Republicans or Democrats, leaving only 180 members who are more or less mainstream Republicans to form
the basis of a functioning center-right coalition.

At some
point, the House will probably pass something related to immigration reform. It
might not resemble the Senate version. It might be 100% about border security,
but some bill will serve as a vehicle to go to a Conference Committee with the
Senate.

Then the
House will vote on assigning members to serve on the Conference Committee. That
requires a majority vote. The Senate has a similar process, although approval
of their conferees is not in doubt. Speaker Boehner will not have an easy time
convincing the majority of his caucus to assign conferees because he cannot
assure them that the Conference Committee will produce a bill that they can
support.

Instead, he
has assured them that he won’t allow a vote on the Conference Report if the
majority doesn’t support it.

In order
for a bill to become a law, both Houses have to pass an identical version of
the bill. That is what the Conference
Report is. Apparently, many House Republicans suspect that the
Conference Report will be a bill that they can’t support.

It’s hard
to see how the Conference Committee can create a report than the Democrats can
support and that the president is willing to sign, but is also acceptable to
the majority of the House. The way it looks right now is that the
Committee will produce a report that the House will reject.

So Mr.
Boehner is caught in a vise: Many traditional Republican supporters favor the
Senate bill. They include: Grover Nordquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the US
Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Majority, the National Association of
Manufacturers and the Financial Services Forum.

He faces
attacks from his right by the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth, and a
revolt from the Tea Party caucus, while most of his traditional sources of
support want him to bring forward something close to the Senate’s bill.

Can Mr.
Boehner find a way to lead on Immigration? If he can, perhaps it will be by
making a deal with most of the 201 House Democrats and 40 or so Republicans.

That would
likely be the end of his ride as Speaker, so don’t bet on Boehner’s leadership
stepping in front of his partisanship in 2013.

The worst
possible outcome for the GOP would be for something like the Senate bill to
become law over the explicit objections of the House leadership. It would give
Democrats a huge policy victory and leave Republicans without the political
dividends they’d pocket if they were equal partners in the reform effort.

It would really
exacerbate their problems with Hispanic voters. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said:

We’ve hit a
demographic wall… If [Republicans] can’t grow our numbers among particularly
Hispanics, it’s pretty hard to win the White House in 2016…it’s hard to sell
your economic agenda if they think we’re going to deport their grandmother…

But the
longer the House takes on immigration, the more the 2016 presidential election
will emerge as a factor in the Republicans’ thinking about how to pass a bill.

The trick
Republicans are trying to play is to win additional seats in the Senate by claiming
they supported the immigration bill, while retaining their majority in the
House by claiming they did not vote to pass the Senate version of the bill.

Hard to
see how this is a winning strategy for their party. Certainly it is not a
winning strategy for the country.