Thursday offered a potent reminder that the Republican civil war remains just as intense on Capitol Hill as it does on the presidential campaign trail—and is offering up new potential victims for Democrats to eviscerate. Let's set the scene: On Wednesday, House Republicans passed a defense spending bill that would have allowed federal contractors to use their claimed religious beliefs as an excuse to fire LGBT people. Nice guys, huh?
Fighting back, Democratic Rep. Sean Maloney offered an amendment to a different defense appropriations bill the following day that would have overturned this anti-LGBT provision. Amazingly enough, despite the GOP's wide majority in the chamber, it passed.
Or so it appeared. As the clock for the two-minute vote expired, 182 Democrats and 35 Republicans joined together to give Maloney's amendment 217 votes; the rest of the GOP could only muster up 206 votes against it. That's math simple enough even for the Republican leadership to understand—and indeed it did. Republicans held the vote open for another six minutes, enough time to coerce seven of their number to switch their votes "quietly from the back benches," as Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer put it.
But few congressional shenanigans get past Hoyer, and soon after, he tweeted out a list of the turncoats. It's an interesting assemblage, to say the least. Of the seven, fully four are potentially vulnerable this fall: California Reps. David Valadao and Jeff Denham; Iowa Rep. David Young; and Maine Rep. Bruce Poliquin. While all of these men are quite conservative, they all at least had the brains to oppose this particularly instance of anti-LGBT bigotry … but not enough fortitude to resist when their party leaders came demanding obedience.
And that's a real problem, because all four of the districts represented by this group went for Barack Obama in 2012, and all four are on Daily Kos Elections' list of races that either will be or could become competitive in November. The coverage of this skullduggery has already been unflattering, and this quartet will not only get painted by their Democratic opponents as bigots but as flip-floppers, too.
Oh, and if you're wondering why the GOP was so insistent on making sure the Maloney amendment failed, Rep. Charlie Dent, one of the provision's Republican supporters, explained that the more conservative members of his party didn't want to get stuck voting for a defense bill with a pro-LGBT amendment attached to it. So House GOP leaders figured they'd sacrifice a few congressman in bluer seats to protect the ultra-wingnuts from possible primary challenges. The Republican war rages on—and only Democrats stand to benefit.