Republican lawmakers are united in their desire to express their rage at and contempt for the president while governing through tax cuts for the rich and service cuts for everyone else, but they
can't quite agree on how to do those things.
At a meeting in the basement of the Capitol Tuesday morning, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the GOP leadership team will face rank-and-file Republicans for the first time since President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration. They will try to convince the troops to channel their anger at a mostly symbolic immigration bill, while agreeing to a separate funding package that would keep most of the government open for nine months, while funding immigration enforcement agencies for just a few months. [...]
By Monday night, leaders were beginning to gauge whether their colleagues would support a bill introduced by Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) that states the executive branch does not have the power to exempt some people from immigration laws — a direct affront to Obama’s moves. The Florida Republican’s bill is expected to garner widespread support in the House conference and give GOP lawmakers an outlet to vent some of their frustrations with Obama. The Senate is not likely to take up the measure.
Boehner and other GOP leaders hope that by allowing them to vote for the Yoho bill they can get enough support from the rank and file to move forward with a funding deal, which will keep nearly all the government open until September 2015, while funding immigration enforcement agencies on a short-term basis.
This is how Republican leaders propose to show their commitment to governing responsibly: They'll try to do their best to convince their members to fund most of the government until the end of the fiscal year, and to get that done they just have to hope that holding an "Obama is a tyrant" temper tantrum vote will be enough to make most congressional Republicans willing to forgo shutting down the government.
And the icing on that cake of sorrow is, if Boehner et al manage that, it will be good enough to draw lavish praise from the likes of Politico and the Washington Post.