Nobody ever accused modern Republicans of being deep thinkers.
In an economy that continues to be defined by ongoing unemployment troubles, dismal state budgets, and other bad news (and with the apparent new realization that there's an election coming up!) trouble's brewing
among House Republicans:
“We need to get more done,” said Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), when asked if what has been laid out is enough. “Our unemployment in Ohio is still too high — it’s 8.5 percent. I remember when Ohio had 4.5 percent unemployment.” [...]
“We can’t blame everything on the Senate. The average American doesn’t realize that,” said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.). “We need to quit passing bills over here and cheering for ourselves when we know they’re dead on arrival over there. And at some point, if the Senate wants to play like this, we need to work something out to help the American people. We think we know the right answers to help them, but we’re not being forceful enough to get the Senate to do it.”
Remember, the only solid 2012 agenda this group was capable of coming up with was "we're going to have lots of investigations to look for something that might hurt Obama." That's it. So it's interesting to hear that now, some House Republicans are worried that maybe completely ignoring unemployment, the economy, and other critical tasks isn't such a bright idea after all.
What will come of it? Nothing, probably. Even within the same Politico article, House Republicans are still more intent on somehow bludgeoning the Senate into accepting House bills than in making any concessions on those bills. There's no larger sense that compromise might (gasp) be needed.
The caucus is too divided to come up with any employment-boosting or economic-boosting plans that would also pass the Senate. At the same time, any House members that do try to pass more moderate measures will likely be tarred and feathered by the cooperation-is-treason GOP base in the next elections. So they're stuck. Their voters will vote them out if they try to do anything acceptable to the president, and the president (or more often, Senate) will kill anything they try to do that's acceptable to their voters.
Grandstanding and incompetent puttering may be the only two things that they're ideologically still allowed to do. Luckily, it's the two things they're still good at.