Internal strife is roiling GOP

BOSTON — BOSTON The Republican Party seems as divided and angry as ever.

Infighting has penetrated the highest levels of the House GOP leadership. Long-standing geographic tensions have increased, pitting endangered Northeastern Republicans against their colleagues from other parts of the country. Enraged "tea party" leaders are threatening to oust dozens of Republicans who supported a measure that raised taxes on the nation's highest earners.

"People are mad as hell. I'm right there with them," Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express, said late last week, declaring that she has "no confidence" in the party her members typically support. Her remarks came after GOP lawmakers agreed to higher taxes but no broad spending cuts as part of a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff."

At the same time, one of the GOP's most popular voices, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, blasted his party's "toxic internal politics" after House Republicans initially declined to approve disaster relief for victims of superstorm Sandy. He said it was "disgusting to watch" their actions and he faulted the GOP's most powerful elected official, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Infighting exposed

The GOP's internal struggles were painfully exposed after Mitt Romney's loss to President Barack Obama on Nov. 6, but they have exploded in recent days. The fallout could extend well beyond the party's ability to win policy battles on Capitol Hill. It could hamper Republicans as they examine how to regroup and attract new voters after a disheartening election season.

To a greater degree than the Democrats, the Republican Party has struggled with internal divisions for the past few years. But these latest clashes have seemed especially public and vicious.

"It's disappointing to see infighting in the party," said Ryan Williams, a Republican operative and former Romney aide. "It doesn't make us look like we're in a position to challenge the president and hold him accountable to the promises he made."

What's largely causing the dissension? A lack of a clear GOP leader with a single vision for the party.

No clear vision

Republicans haven't had a consistent standard-bearer since President George W. Bush left office in 2008 with the nation on the edge of a financial collapse. His departure, along with widespread economic concerns, gave rise to a tea party movement that infused the GOP's conservative base with energy.

The tea party is credited with broad Republican gains in the 2010 congressional elections, but it's also blamed for the rising tension between the pragmatic and ideological wings of the party -- discord that festers still.

2012 presidential nominee Romney never fully captured the hearts of his party's most passionate voters. But his tenure atop the party was short-lived; since Election Day, he's disappeared from the political world. And those Republican leaders who remain engaged show little sign of coming together.

Those on the GOP's deep bench of potential 2016 presidential contenders, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, have begun staking out their own, sometimes conflicting ideas for the party.

Divisive issues

Obama has outlined a second-term agenda focused on immigration and gun control; those are issues that would test Republican solidarity even in good times. Deep splits already exist between Republican pragmatists and the conservative base, who oppose any restrictions on guns or allowances for illegal immigrants.

With Boehner unable to control his fractured caucus, the White House is left wondering how to deal with the House on any divisive issue.

Fiscal issues aren't going away. The federal government reached its borrowing limit last week, so Congress has about two months or three months to raise the debt ceiling or risk a default on federal debt.

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House Republicans riven by internal battle over spending

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A battle among Republicans in the House of Representatives over government spending laid bare on Thursday deep divisions that threaten the party's hopes of major gains in the November congressional elections.

House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, faced a new challenge to his authority as lawmakers aligned to the budget-slashing Tea Party movement ignored his plea to support a $260 billion job creation measure he had championed.

Boehner told reporters he was ready to abandon the highway, bridges and railroad funding bill after fiscally conservative lawmakers balked at the price tag.

The bill was meant to help Republicans stake an election-year claim as the party of job creation, funding as many as 7.8 million new jobs in the U.S. construction industry.

But Tea Party-affiliated lawmakers, a powerful group within the 242-member House Republican caucus, were elected in 2010 on a wave of voter discontent over a bad economy and government spending. They have repeatedly shown themselves to be uncompromising on tax and spending issues, bringing the United States to the brink of an unprecedented debt default last year.

"This is a very difficult process we're in," Boehner acknowledged on Thursday. "We've got a new majority, we've got 89 freshmen and my job every day is to work with our members and find out where the center of gravity is," he said.

Boehner has struggled over the past year to control an unruly caucus that has often bucked his leadership, raising repeated questions about his staying power. The Republican leader and aides dismiss talk that he is vulnerable to an ouster.

But internal revolt is also stirring over federal spending levels for 2013. Fiscally conservative lawmakers now want even deeper spending cuts than those agreed to with the White House in a deficit reduction deal last August.

So, instead of putting the finishing touches on a budget that they can contrast with Democratic spending priorities in an election year, Republican leaders huddled with House Budget Committee members on Thursday in an effort to quell the conflict within their party.

But they failed to agree on a spending cut target that could please both conservatives and more moderate members.

"There are differences of opinion within our conference," Representative Mike Simpson told reporters after the meeting.

AIDES ACKNOWLEDGE DIFFICULTIES

Veteran Washington political analyst Larry Sabato said there was a "deep divide, not fully acknowledged within the caucus."

"They don't grasp how deep," he said.

The intra-party infighting comes seven weeks after House Republicans pledged at a party retreat to bury their differences and unify to defeat President Barack Obama in November.

The display of unity followed a public relations nightmare for them in December when the party struggled to heal an internal rift over whether to extend a costly payroll tax cut extension for 160 million Americans.

The squabbling threatens to distract the party when it is meant to be focused on retaining control of the House and recapturing the Senate from Democrats.

Two senior House Republicans aides, asking not to be identified, acknowledged the difficulties their party faced just eight months before the November 6 elections.

"It is easy to take a snapshot now and say, 'look things aren't going well,'" one of the aides said, while laying the blame on Democrats. "We don't have the Senate and we don't have the White House. Nobody expected this Congress would be easy."

The second aide said Boehner was in a difficult bind. If he decided to allow a 2013 House budget proposal with deeper spending cuts than planned in order to win Tea Party support, he could end up painting the party into a corner.

The aide said setting a lower level in the spending bills might be popular with some voters, but the bills, which must be approved by September 30, were unlikely to get Democratic votes and enough moderate Republican support to assure passage.

That would leave Republicans with two choices just six weeks before the November 6 elections, the aide said: Switch their votes to support the higher spending levels - a potentially embarrassing move - or threaten government shutdowns as funding would be running out with the start of the new fiscal year on October 1. That likely would bring a strong voter backlash.

Representative Bill Shuster, a six-term Republican who worked to build Republican support for the now-stalled transportation bill, said the large number of Republican newcomers to the House makes for an uphill battle.

"You have 89 members who never seen a transportation bill before," Shuster said of the freshmen, many of them Tea Party supporters. "It's a lot of people to educate."

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, editing by Ross Colvin; desking by Cynthia Osterman)

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