Where Are They?
ShareMissing in all the discussion about who is supporting who is this reality: Three days into the race to become the next House Maj Leader, John Boehner and Roy Blunt have, between them, less than 80 public commitments from their 229 GOP colleagues.
Is there a bumper crop of private support that both sides have locked down but aren't, for whatever reason, revealing? Perhaps. But given all that the Conference has endured starting with DeLay's indictment in September (Duke-stir, Scanlon, Abramoff), how has Boehner -- or any other outside challenger -- not emerged as the new Sheriff in town?
A look at the two candidates may explain it.
Boehner is pointing to positive clips from conservative thinkers off the Hill and touting his reform roots in the "Gang of Seven," the freshman GOP crew who, in the early '90s, hammered House Dems over the House banking and postal scandals (though Boehner was not the one that wore the paper bag over his head on the House floor back then; that young rabble rouser is now Chairman Nussle (R-IA))
To us, it seems that Boehner is trying to align himself with the emerging conservative school of thought (best expressed in the WSJ) that the ossified GOP majority needs to remember that they came to town not to praise D.C., but to bury it.
While this may be Boehner's best angle in forming a coalition large enough to hit 116, it is not exactly a natural fit. Yes, yes, we know that Boehner voted against the pork-stuffed highway bill last year. And we know that he has not tucked in earmarks to benefit OH-08 since coming to the House.
But the Boehner his colleagues know -- and the Boehner that the folks in this town who care about such inside-baseball as leadership races likely know -- is the one that you can find dragging on a cigarette and kibitzing with members and lobbyists in the basement grill of the Capitol Hill Club most nights the House is in session.
Blunt is every bit as married, as it were, into the lobbying culture as Boehner. More important, Blunt is part of the old regime. He can praise the Speaker's undefined "lobbying reform" all day long, but that does not change the fact that he is in the unenviable position of being an incumbent running in a campaign that demands change. In short, he is running against the capital from the Capitol.
Now we know that most House GOPers are in favor of "reform" to the extent that such changes quickly "reform" the media narrative of GOP corruption and ensure their seats for another term. But does the paucity of public commitments for either camp mean that there are now a healthy chunk of members who, pushed over the edge by the Abramoff affair, are truly fed up with business as usual?
If the language used by Boehner, Rogers and Tiahrt yesterday means anything, we'd be inclined to think so. These candidates wouldn't be making those rumblings were they not hearing, well, rumblings from colleagues as they work the phones and canvass for support.
If Blunt's lead widens and he can establish a sense of inevitability, all this might not matter. But if there are enough members withholding their vote -- and not just withholding their public commitment -- these reformers may play a pivotal role in deciding the course of the House GOP and the Congress.
Why? Because it would mean that when the candidates come calling (remember, both will likely make their pitch before the RSC and the Tuesday Group) on these members at the end of a tight race, both Boehner and Blunt will have to pledge fealty to some real measure of reform to get the 116.
Real reform meaning more than just a quickie, fig-leaf of a bill rushed through the House that can turn the page on the "Culture of Corruption" storyline, but a more sweeping measure that touches on "inside" reforms and "outside" reforms (more on the difference between those two later).
Will there be enough of these members -- what the Speaker might call a "minority of the majority" -- to force an institutional reevaluation and restructuring of the House?
Let us know. Who are the members that comprise this "Change Caucus?" And will they hang together to make a difference?
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