(The Hill) – To keep conservative rebels in check, Speaker
John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his allies have been doling out punishments at an
aggressive clip in the 114th Congress.
From kicking unruly members off the Rules Committee and GOP
whip team to stripping a lawmaker of his subcommittee gavel, leadership has
been growing more comfortable with taking retaliatory measures to try to
enforce party discipline.
But several Tea Party targets haven’t gone quietly. They’ve
been fighting back with help from Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan’s conservative House
Freedom Caucus, which successfully pressured leaders this week to return a
subcommittee gavel to one of their members.
GOP leaders are now in a holding pattern as they figure out
whether any other rebels should be punished. Here’s a short history of the
dozen defectors who’ve experienced Boehner’s wrath — so far — this Congress:
Boehner boots two from Rules
Committee
Boehner’s first act of retribution arrived on the opening
day of the new Congress. Within hours of voting against Boehner for Speaker,
Florida Republican Reps. Daniel
Webster and Rich
Nugentwere unceremoniously dumped from the House Rules Committee.
Boehner directly appoints majority-party members to the panel, known as the
“Speaker’s committee,” which acts as an arm of leadership in determining how
legislation is considered on the House floor. Selected members are expected to
demonstrate their loyalty.
Outcome: Webster’s first-quarter fundraising totals shot up after
many conservatives embraced his last-minute run for Speaker. But GOP aides
expect his fundraising to falter over the long term since leadership-affiliated
groups won’t be helping him out as they did in the past. Webster and Nugent’s
seats sat empty for three months until Boehner appointed Reps. Bradley Byrne
(R-Ala.) and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) to replace them.
Revoked travel privileges
House GOP leadership aides say that taxpayer-funded travel
is “a privilege and not a right.” At least three conservatives who frequently
oppose leadership — Reps. Steve
King (Iowa), Ted Yoho(Fla.)
and Louie Gohmert (Texas)
— learned the lesson the hard way. The Speaker’s office informed King of his
revoked funds just a few hours before his flight was set to depart for a
congressional delegation to Egypt. Yoho, one of the three long-shot Republicans
to challenge Boehner for Speaker, was removed from a spring congressional
delegation to attend the Summit of the Americas in Panama. And Gohmert was
removed from scheduled trips to Egypt and Africa earlier this year.
Outcome: King ultimately went on the trip to Egypt anyway with
his own money and “literally reached into my kids’ inheritance.” Yoho kept
quiet about the revoked travel privileges until this week when he felt
compelled to speak out in the aftermath of recent retribution for voting
against a procedural motion for the trade package this month. Gohmert remained
defiant: “As a result of [Boehner] canceling my trip this weekend, I get to be
on Fox News,” he declared on the House floor in March. Still, it’s a lot harder
for these lawmakers to join colleagues for expensive foreign trips when it’s on
their own dime.
Three purged from whip team
After 34 conservatives revolted against leadership and tried
to kill a major trade package this month, Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.)
quickly purged offenders from his vote-counting team. Three Freedom Caucus
members — Reps. Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.), Trent Franks (Ariz.) andSteve Pearce (N.M.) — were booted
from the team, marking the first wave of retaliation against lawmakers who
voted to block the trade bills over objections to the “convoluted” way they
would be structured on the floor.
Outcome: For the most part, the conservative trio accepted Scalise’s
decision, since longstanding whip-team rules dictate that members must stick
with leadership on procedural rules votes. Some of the intraparty divisions can
be attributed to the fact that the 246-member GOP conference is the largest
it’s been in generations, Lummis said. “I was really sad. I don’t want to see
these things escalate,” she told The Hill. “Republicans occasionally like to
snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Meadows stripped of committee
gavel
Perhaps no act of retribution sparked more conservative
outrage than when House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) ousted
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.)
as a subcommittee chairman for voting against the same trade rule and failing
to pay party dues. Though mild-mannered and well-liked by his colleagues,
Meadows already had been on thin ice for voting against Boehner for Speaker and
co-founding the Freedom Caucus. In a meeting in Meadows’ office, Chaffetz said
he had consulted with GOP leaders and the Steering Committee but that the
decision was entirely his own.
Outcome: On Thursday, just a week later, Chaffetz abruptly reversed
course and reinstated Meadows as chairman of Oversight’s subcommittee on
government operations — even though Boehner had publicly endorsed Chaffetz’s
punishment against Meadows a day earlier. Conservative media personalities had
spent the week ripping Chaffetz; Redstate’s Erick Erickson dissed him as
a “lapdog of leadership.” But it was a GOP conference rule that
ultimately forced Chaffetz to revoke the punishment. To appoint Meadows’
successor as subcommittee chairman, Chaffetz needed backing from a majority of
his committee members. The problem: The full panel was stacked with Freedom
Caucus members and their sympathizers, who wanted Meadows reinstated and
threatened to scuttle any new pick.
Plot to sack freshman class
president
Rep. Ken Buck had
seen what was happening to other Freedom Caucus members who joined him in
voting against the trade rule. Late Tuesday, the Colorado Republican became the
target. A freshman colleague, Rep. Cresent Hardy (R-Nev.), approached him with
an ultimatum: Resign as GOP freshman class president, or we will vote you out.
Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.), the freshman liaison to leadership, and other
Boehner allies hastily scheduled a meeting for the next day to overthrow Buck.
But he refused to step down; instead, Buck took to Twitter and issued a defiant
message: “Bring it on.”
Outcome: Buck survived the coup attempt, though he emerged from the
meeting in the Capitol bruised and battered. His fellow freshmen complained he
was an ineffective leader, saying he hadn’t organized enough freshman
gatherings or communicated to the group. But Buck has organized a variety of
events including a bipartisan freshman lunch with former Obama administration
official and current Uber executive David Plouffe, a reception with wine and
spirits wholesalers, and an upcoming trip to Langley, Va. His vote to undermine
leadership also was a source of frustration, one freshman lawmaker in the room
said. Buck’s political foes said they had enough votes to remove him, but they
backed off after his allies begged to give him another chance to make things
right.
Bills blocked from floor votes
Rep. Walter
Jones (R-N.C.), an 11-term libertarian who frequently bucks his
party, has been the target of punishment before: GOP leaders removed him from
the powerful House Financial Services Committee in 2012. Reps. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.), David Schweikert (Ariz.)
and Justin Amash (Mich.)
were also kicked off the Budget, Agriculture and Financial Services Committees
at the time. But Jones claims leadership has reached a new level of pettiness
in preventing a vote on his bill to rename a federal courthouse in his district
after Randy Doub, a judge who passed away earlier this year.
“You can despise the individual, but for God’s sakes, this
actually is hurtful to the family,” Jones told The Hill.
A House GOP leadership aide denied that Jones’s bill was
intentionally held up.
During the first week of the new Congress in January,
Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas)
was originally slated to be the sponsor of a noncontroversial bill that
establishes an Energy Department research program on low-dose radiation. But he
claimed leadership changed the author to Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) after
Weber pledged to oppose Boehner’s reelection as Speaker.
Outcome: The courthouse renaming bill has stalled after the House
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee sent it to the floor in May. Jones
said he’s discussed potentially changing the chief sponsor of the bill to Rep.
G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) instead so that it can move forward. “I’ve been told
that any bill that I have of consequence, that if my name’s on it, it’s
probably not going to get moving,” Jones said.
Comments
This is disgraceful.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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