The House Republicans? Primal Scream

Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

Shortly after 2 a.m. on New Year?s Day, 89 senators finally passed a cobbled-together deal to avert the ?fiscal cliff.? The big House Republican meet-up, the one that could end America?s least favorite epic drama, would come at 1 p.m. Reporters welcomed 2013 with cheap champagne in the Capitol rotunda.

Then, shortly after noon, while Vice President Joe Biden was telling House Democrats to back the bill, Republicans were telling reporters to check their optimism. This was not the come-to-Jesus meeting to whip votes. This would be a ?conversation,? a Festivus-like airing of grievances. Some time later, the Republican conference would meet to talk about passing the bill. When would they vote on it? Ask again later.

The worries were justified. Inside the conference, as Speaker of the House John Boehner stayed neutral, member after member got up to denounce the deal. Majority Leader Eric Cantor warned that he did not support the bill in its current form. ?When the leader speaks,? said one Republican member, ?people listen more closely.? His defiance meant a lot more than some panicky Senate votes.

?We should not take a package put together by a bunch of octogenarians on New Year's Eve,? said Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette inside the meeting. After he left the room, Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston joked that the deal passed only because ?it was way past those senators? bedtimes and they had blurry eyes when they were reading? it. House Republicans? Why, they were ?trying to fill in the gaps they might have missed.?

Time and again, Washington is shocked by two incredibly well-known facts about House Republicans. One: They believe all of that stuff they tell their conservative audiences, from the town halls to the Sean Hannity remote feed. They ran in 2010 promising never to raise taxes and to take a samurai sword to the budget. Whatever Paul Ryan asked them to cut, they voted to cut. Two: Most of these members come from safe districts where the only threats to re-election are primary challenges or death by natural causes.

And yet they?re never, ever allowed to govern the way they want. Assume that they end up caving and passing a fiscal cliff compromise?this compromise, which punts the mandatory sequestration cuts from defense and discretionary spending, which ends the payroll tax cut and restores a higher tax rate on income above $450,000. If that happens, then for the third time in two years they?ve punted on huge spending cuts and entitlement reform, told once again that they can get them later.

Thus, the hours-long primal scream. When he left the afternoon meeting, Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus said that the deal would have to be amended to include more spending cuts, which meant that it would go back to the Senate?he?d be ?shocked? if it didn?t?which in turn meant that it would be doomed by Democrats who refused to entertain more changes. Wouldn?t that backfire on Republicans? ?Sooner or later,? said Bachus, ?you have to think that out-of-control spending is going to doom the markets.?

Bachus had to say that. In 2012, he held back a primary challenge from a Republican who?d run to his right, branding him a crooked compromiser. ?Never has the anger in this country been so great,? said Bachus in his victory speech. ?I can certainly identify with those who voted for someone else.?

You identify with it, or you lose. Consider the let-downs that conservatives had to put up with. In February 2011, they wanted to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government, with $100 billion in cuts. But the cuts, as presented to them by leadership, were based on old budget baselines. Some conservatives wanted to shut down the government. Their leaders convinced them to cave, because it would ruin their image. The savings earned after bitter negotiations were about half as big as promised.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=f7500b45cd3e26b9e2dc8bc9d9451f91

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