House Republican skirmish over top spot could expose party fissures

The Republican Party should be going into the new session of Congress buoyant on the back of an electoral win that increased their size in the House and saw them seize the Senate. Instead, GOP grandees will be casting a weary eye on internal strife, with attempts at a political putsch threatening to expose existing divides.

On Tuesday, representatives affiliated with the tea party will attempt to unseat the chamber’s top Republican, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, citing what they perceive as his failure to block crucial elements of President Barack Obama’s policy agenda.

Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., put himself forward as a candidate for speaker over the weekend. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, announced his own candidacy shortly afterward. Both congressmen are members of the House Liberty Caucus — a group formed last year by members of Congress affiliated with the tea party.

Neither Gohmert nor Yoho is likely to unseat Boehner, who weathered a similar leadership challenge shortly after the 2012 presidential election. Yet the open discord between Boehner and some prominent members of his caucus sheds light on internal divisions that are likely to plague the House Republicans for the foreseeable future, according to Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol.

“I think they’re going to run into trouble again and again,” said Skocpol.

That trouble has been a persistent fact of U.S. political life for at least the past couple of years. In 2011, the tea party’s hard line on deficit reduction created an impasse in the partisan debate over how to raise the debt ceiling, a legal maneuver required so the U.S. could continue taking on debt. Two years later, that wing of the Republican Party again held out for steeper cuts during negotiations meant to avoid the fiscal cliff or the impending expiration of several simultaneous spending and tax cutting measures.

More recently, the federal government shut down for more than two weeks in October 2013 due to a standoff over spending cuts. The right wing of the Republican caucus also successfully scuttled efforts to ink a bipartisan immigration reform deal.

All of which has put that faction of the party into direct conflict with Boehner, who has shown more willingness to make concessions on policy if it averts prolonged legislative standoffs. The difference between him and someone like Gohmert or Yoho, according to Skocpol, is one more of tactics than policy preferences.

“To the degree that there is any sort of split, it’s a split in how far you go in grinding the U.S. government to a halt in an effort to stop or roll back all of President Obama’s major accomplishments,” said Skocpol, a co-author of “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.”

To hear Boehner’s critics from inside the GOP tell it, he has actively stymied his own party’s efforts to halt an unprecedented assault on the Constitution. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, suggested as much in a Sunday op-ed he wrote explaining why he would not be voting for the Speaker to retain his post.

"We need a speaker who will help us all keep our oath, including his own, to the Constitution, not one who has consistently blocked our efforts to keep ours,” wrote King. "I will vote for an alternative candidate for speaker. I can’t vote for John Boehner again."

Rumblings of another attempt to unseat Boehner have been ongoing since months before the 2014 midterms. As early as April of last year, there were reports that members of the House Liberty Caucus were planning his ouster.

“At this point, the Speaker’s election is not about a particular candidate,” said Gohmert in the statement announcing his candidacy. “It is about whether we keep the status quo or make the change the country demands. I am putting forward my name for consideration as speaker and hope that with a new speaker, be that me or someone else, we can fight for the ideals and principles that the voters wanted when they elected us in November.”