House Republicans were expected to be picking up the pieces after a bruising election cycle. Instead, an emboldened GOP is preparing to pull Democrats apart.
After a better than anticipated performance at the polls last week, House Republicans are elated over the prospect of Speaker Nancy Pelosi having a slim majority next year. And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his top lieutenants are already plotting how to divide Democrats and cause major disruptions on the floor using every procedural weapon at their disposal.
“We are going to use every tool that we have to fight for conservative principles and to battle against socialists,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana vowed in an interview. “And we have more conservative members coming in who want to be a part of that fight.”
Republicans are now within striking distance of winning back the House in 2022. Not only have they already erased a good chunk of the Democratic gains from 2018, but they also have history on their side: The president’s party typically loses seats in the first midterm election.
Pelosi and her campaign chief before Nov. 3 had been so confident Democrats would dominate this election that they talked about how this November’s winners could help insulate potential losses in two years. Instead, Democrats, who lost a net six seats so far, have their slimmest majority in two decades. A few more uncalled races could still swing to the GOP.
Those dynamics are giving congressional Republicans something to cheer about, even as President Donald Trump is about to be swept out of power and the Senate majority is up for grabs until a pair of Georgia runoff races are decided on Jan. 5.
“We are pretty giddy, I must say,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former head of the House GOP’s campaign arm. “The excitement is palpable.”
“We will press [Democrats] hard on the floor over the next two years to set up repeated situations where their vulnerable members have to cast tough votes,” he added.
Since taking back the House and reclaiming the speaker’s gavel two years ago, Pelosi has had a sizable cushion to work with — over 230 Democrats in the House. That means Pelosi could afford to lose a handful of votes from her members when she needed to. And she never had to rely on Republicans to shepherd must-pass bills though the House.
But next year, Pelosi and her deputies will have little room for error. Democrats will probably only have a five- to 10-seat majority. That could make it difficult to pass even routine legislation, especially with the moderate and liberal wings of the party already sparring over their agenda and what went wrong in the election. Policy priorities that veer too far in one direction may be out of the question in some cases.
Democrats, for their part, argue the caucus will be united in pushing a Biden agenda through Congress — though McCarthy argues they’re in a weaker position.
"Republican victories at the ballot box were a direct result of Democrats’ failures on the House floor," McCarthy said in a statement to POLITICO. "Now they enter a new Congress smaller and more divided."
Republicans see the upcoming Congress as an opportunity for more bipartisanship in the House — even if it’s only out of pure necessity. And even Democrats say they expect a more bipartisan focus under President-elect Joe Biden, with fewer chances for messaging bills to reach the floor, as the two parties look to bolster a strained economy and achieve big ticket priorities like infrastructure.
“Speaker Pelosi is gonna have a tough time,” said Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who serves as a deputy whip and is running for GOP conference secretary. “She’s gonna have to make a decision: Does she want to work with Republicans to get things done? Or does she continue to cater to the base of her party?”
At the very least, Democrats’ whip-counting operation is going to be working hard next year, some floor votes are bound to be suspenseful and “family discussions” could get ugly and spill out into public view. And Republicans, who for years rolled their eyes at the media coverage of their internal feuds when they held the majority, are looking forward to the reversal.
“There’s some very big divisions in the Democrat conference,” Scalise said, “and it’s only going to get worse for them.”
Democrats, however, say don’t underestimate Pelosi. The speaker is known as a master vote counter who has been successfully corralling her members for her nearly two decades in power. That’s also why Democrats confidently say the GOP’s assertions that Pelosi could struggle to win 218 votes for the speaker’s gavel are overblown.
And even some Republicans agree — although they think that works in their favor.
"I don't underrate her,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina. “She has an enormous capacity to whip her conference to vote against their political interests.”
"And going into the midterm, she has a lot of skittish members, and I have confidence she'll get them to walk to the plank in a way that will be helpful for Republicans in 2022," he added.
No one has stepped forward to challenge Pelosi, despite some grumblings in the caucus. Pelosi and her top two deputies, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, are all expected to lead the House for another two-year term.
Still, Republicans are going to try to make life as painful as possible for Democrats over the next two years. They are planning to exploit divisions in the party using procedural tools that had already caused some heartburn for Democrats with their more robust majority over the past two years.
That includes drafting discharge petitions, which require 218 signatures to circumvent leadership and force floor votes, and “motions to recommit,” which allow the minority to amend a bill before final passage.
And the House GOP has successfully used these procedural maneuvers: They picked off enough Democrats to win as many as eight motions to recommit this Congress. They did so by crafting amendments that targeted vulnerable Democrats, spurring them to vote against their party out of fears of GOP attack ads back home. When Democrats held the minority from 2011 to 2017, they didn’t win a single motion to recommit.
Some Democrats, though, were in such tough electoral turf that they actually came to relish the chance to vote against their party.
In the past two years alone, dozens of Democrats have broken ranks in key moments — voting to add immigration-related language to their party’s universal background checks bill or an amendment to “commend” the work of U.S. Border Patrol agents to a bill on safety and hygiene standards for migrants in U.S. custody.
House Democrats are privately worrying about how Republicans will deploy procedural votes against them to an even greater degree in January.
Already, some centrist Democrats are having informal discussions about how to address the issue. One idea Democrats are considering is to raise the threshold for adoption to two-thirds of the House — making it much more difficult for Republicans to actually make changes to legislation — though no decisions have been made.
Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida, a leader of the Blue Dog Coalition who worked with Democratic leaders to limit their defections, said she supports making changes to the motion to recommit.
"I would support raising the threshold, and in fact, I think that’s the responsible thing to do,” Murphy said, arguing that any GOP attempts to change a bill should be considered as amendments in committee, rather than a last-minute vote on the floor.
“If we are going to have a measure that might make a change to a bill and be considered in a last minute way, then it should be something so overwhelmingly popular or overwhelmingly accepted that it can be done so with little consideration,” Murphy said.
Among House Democrats, it is Hoyer and Clyburn who handle the GOP procedural drama. The Democrats' handling of the votes has improved dramatically since the start of the 116th Congress, though the caucus has still lost some of those votes this year.
Republicans have had zero success with discharge petitions thus far. Amid a broader standoff over coronavirus relief, some centrist Democrats desperate for relief for struggling entrepreneurs threatened to sign a GOP-led discharge petition that would have forced a floor vote on a bill to help small businesses. But Democrats never went through with the threat, even though Congress has yet to deliver another round of aid.
The last time a discharge petition succeeded was in 2015, when lawmakers used it to force a vote to extend the charter of the Export-Import Bank.
But Republicans think if Democratic leaders are seen as catering to the progressive wing of the party, the GOP will have a better shot at persuading frustrated centrist Democrats to buck their leadership and sign their names to discharge petitions.
Meanwhile, the GOP is feeling bolstered in another way: They defied all projections to actually grow and diversify their ranks. They even made gains in California and held onto vulnerable seats in Texas. And they have yet to lose a single GOP incumbent — a remarkable feat in a tough political environment.
Party leaders attribute their success to the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party. They feel like the “socialist” taglines — and linking Democrats in tough races to the “defund the police” movement — worked. And Republicans plan to amplify that messaging even further as the battle for the House heats up.
“The job of the majority is to govern,” Cole said. “The job of the minority is to become the majority.”
from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/2Uspqct
via 400 Since 1619
