Speaker John Boehner practices
for upcoming GOP retreat
House Republicans met as a caucus for the first time in the new session on Wednesday, and seemingly could only agree on one thing: They still
hate President Obama and will continue to focus on making him lose. How they'll do that has yet to be determined.
The 242-member House majority met behind closed doors for the first time this year, coming off a bitter defeat in the payroll tax fight at the close of 2011.
Party leaders emerged from the meeting proclaiming that the conference was united around the belief that President Obama’s policies have failed, though they have to settle on their own strategy for the coming election year.
“Our members are united around the realization that the policies that have been promoted by this administration have not worked,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said.
Well, there's something holding them together. Cantor also had some vague words about "how we go about creating small business jobs," so there's that, too. There apparently wasn't what some of the more tea-baggy members of the caucus wanted from leadership; an apology for what they saw as capitulation on the temporary payroll tax cut extension last month.
Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), one of the loudest critics of the payroll tax deal, said: “Of course we talked about what happened in December, because a lot of people were not happy about that, and there are lessons learned and we will build up on that as we get ready to go to the retreat up in Baltimore over the next couple days.”
West said that leaders did not apologize for the way the payroll tax fight unfolded.
“It’s not a matter of apologizing,” he said. “It is a matter of applying lessons going forward.”
That retreat in Baltimore is going to be a lot of fun for Boehner, as is the next year of trying to make his caucus not look even more like a bunch of bomb-throwing yahoos.
1:28 PM PT: To prove how much they hate President Obama, they just passed a symbolic resolution saying that they disapprove of his request to increase the debt ceiling. Having this opportunity, meaningless as it is, to thumb their nose at the president was part of the debt ceiling deal concluded last August. It's symbolic because it won't pass the Senate, and even if it could, Obama would veto it.
Anyway, they just passed it 239-176.