I thought of Mahon, and Fenno, last week as I watched David Price of North Carolina give an eloquent, anguished speech on the floor of the House as it debated the Homeland Security appropriations bill. Price had a distinguished career himself as a congressional scholar before he came to Congress, and he continues to write insightfully about Congress from the inside (ask him for the paper he wrote for a recent conference at Yale). More important, he is an institutionalist to his core, a longtime member of Appropriations who venerates a deliberative process, bipartisan cooperation and action, and regular order.

Why was Price so distraught? The Homeland Security Subcommittee, on which he is the ranking Democrat, had brought a balanced, sensible bill to the floor, crafted with the participation and cooperation of members on both sides, to protect our homeland within severe budget constraints. The work inside the subcommittee had been a model of how the process should work -- but for a second year in a row, its work was threatened by a poison-pill amendment offered by that poster boy for radical nihilism, Steve King of Iowa. The amendment blew up the Dream Act, taking away all discretion from the Department of Homeland Security to focus its deportation resources on criminals and miscreants and forcing the department to end any deferral in the deportation process that enables "dreamers" to stay in the United States.

By his own admission, King was trying to blow up any chance for a comprehensive immigration bill to pass the House. But the amendment was also a key test of whether the current Republican leaders of the House, and especially the members and leaders of the Appropriations Committee, valued this model of bipartisan deliberation and decision enough to keep its model bill intact.

They failed the test. Miserably. Not a single Republican on the Homeland Security Subcommittee voted against the poison-pill amendment. Only one Republican member of the full committee, freshman David Valadao of California, opposed it. No Republican member of the party leadership team opposed it. Committee Chairman Hal Rogers showed the opposite of leadership and proved he does not belong in the same category as Taber, Cannon, Mahon, Bill Natcher, Dave Obey, Bob Livingston, Bill Young, and others who cared about process and regular order, and the fierce independence and responsibility of the historic panel.

Rogers is actually a good guy, as are many of the committee members -- like Oklahoma's Tom Cole -- who failed the test. The only logical explanation is a frightening one: They are all intimidated by the more extreme and radical forces in their party. That the driving forces in today's GOP -- the ones who can say "Jump" and have the party leaders respond "How high?" -- are the likes of Steve King and Ted Cruz is deeply unsettling.