As a caution to people (especially in the media) not to get all worked up over the race for House Majority Leader, David Kurtz notes the following in yesterday's TPM News Digest e-mail:
But it's easy to overstate the significance of the race. For instance, in 1998, then-Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) faced an uprising in his own caucus and didn't win re-election as majority leader until the third ballot.
Does anyone remember who challenged him then?
I had to look it up.
Reps. Steve Largent (R-OK) and Jennifer Dunn (R-WA)
Just goes to show you. The intensity of the moment can fade rather quickly.
Funny thing: The media didn't obsess over this the way they're obsessing over Hoyer/Murtha. More after the jump!
Funny thing: I don't recall the media back in 1998 feverishly spinning Armey's re-election difficulties as a sign of weakness or division in the GOP, do you? Even though the GOP, far from having won the expected Big Victory over the Democrats,
wound up having a net loss of five seats in the House and chose to dump Newt Gingrich as House Speaker as the scapegoat for the Armey-led impeachment drive's backfiring at the ballot box.
(And this wasn't the end of the House GOP's struggles: Remember how Bob Livingston was supposed to replace Newt as Speaker -- until
Larry Flynt, Hero of the Republic, stepped in?)
UPDATE: And even as the media is already pronouncing Pelosi's speakership to be "doomed" because of a typical leadership battle, they aren't trying to spin
the revival of the titanic
Boehner-Blunt Majority Leader rivalry in the House GOP as evidence of the GOP House Caucus's allegedly fragile state.