Time and again, conservatives have refused to line up behind Boehner and Cantor. Boehner, Cantor struggle to lead

There are times when it looks like Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor have no idea how to run the House Republican Conference.

In just two frantic days, rank-and-file House Republicans sidelined leadership’s plan to fund the government and take another nonbinding, quixotic vote on defunding President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. These Republicans said the leadership plan is too weak, lacks a long-term strategy and is akin to waving a white flag on Obamacare.


The skirmish is yet another example of how few Republicans are willing to follow Boehner and Cantor’s lead during tough legislative fights. And in practical terms, the rejection of what became known as the Cantor Plan — a continuing resolution, with an unattached provision to defund Obamacare — makes it more likely that the House and Senate will be at loggerheads with a government shutdown looming on Sept. 30.

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A clearly frustrated Boehner seemed to realize that he leads a conference where no plan is quite good enough. There are frequently about 30 Republicans who oppose leadership’s carefully crafted plans — just enough to mess things up. A reporter asked him whether he has a new idea to resolve the government funding fight. He laughed and said, “No.”

“Do you have an idea?” he asked the reporters. “They’ll just shoot it down anyway.”

Rank-and-file Republicans want to hold out until the last minute of Sept. 30 on government funding, hoping that somehow the Senate Democrats who spent months on Obamacare would vote to strip it of funding. Yet following Wednesday’s announcement that a House vote on a continuing resolution to fund the government would be indefinitely delayed, Senate Democrats are watching the House and wondering how Boehner and Cantor will get themselves out of this jam.

( Also on POLITICO: House pulls CR amid GOP division)

It’s a pattern that’s played out over the course of this Congress. Boehner and Cantor propose a plan, announce a vote and conservatives bail.

Boehner and Cantor have spoken about the need for immigration reform, yet there’s not a shred of urgency among House Republicans to pass it. The two GOP leaders endorsed Obama’s proposal to launch military attacks on Syria, yet just a few dozen Republicans — at most — agreed with them. The farm bill that Cantor oversaw remains unfinished. The appropriations process has been a debacle, as House Republicans have violated their own budget guidelines. And in private discussions, GOP leadership aides acknowledge they have absolutely no idea how they’ll lift the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. That deadline hits in mid-October.

House Republicans — from leadership to the rank and file — say overall legislative strategy is short-sighted and has no support from the majority of the GOP Conference. For example, the recent plan to defund Obamacare won’t defund it at all. The proposed CR includes a provision to defund the health law, but the Senate can strip it out and send the bill straight to the president without referring it back to the House.

“I don’t think the vision and the long-term path is being articulated,” Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) said about the most recent uprising against leadership. “You’re seeing short-term fixes. It’s like playing a football game and all you talk about is the next down. You don’t talk about winning the game. It’s like, let’s play this next down and do the best we can.”

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Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of leadership, said it is frustrating that there’s no strategic vision from above.

“It is,” he told POLITICO. “That’s not one I can fix.”

To help pass a government-funding bill out of the House, GOP insiders expect they’ll have to take an increasingly hard-line position that will be irreconcilable with the Senate and White House preferences. That increases the chances of a government shutdown at the end of the month. GOP leadership aides say they’ll still work to gather support on the original bill next week.

The CR that was delayed Wednesday was an attempt by leadership to give House Republicans a chance to vote to defund Obamacare without risking a politically disastrous government shutdown.

But many GOP lawmakers saw through the proposal: The Senate could strip out the defund provision from the CR and send it to Obama. Only 17 GOP “no” votes would’ve brought the whole bill down as few, if any, House Democrats were expected to support the legislation.

The internal opposition has cut GOP leadership off at the knees. At some point, the House will likely have to pass a clean CR. Unless they can squelch this latest rebellion, Boehner (R-Ohio) and Cantor (R-Va.) will have to go to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to ask her to help avoid a government shutdown. That is likely to result in higher spending and a bill designed to attract Democratic support. Boehner is meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday.

The rejection of Cantor’s plan has also sparked a new round of ideas for government funding, many of which leadership will now have to entertain, but none have a prayer of becoming law. GOP conservatives are floating new ideas, such as sending funding bills that defund Obamacare to the Senate right up until the Sept. 30 deadline.

Some House Republicans — chiefly Republican Study Chairman Steve Scalise of Louisiana — want to attach a one-year delay of Obamacare to a yearlong government funding bill that also blunts sequester cuts. That faces no chance of making it through the Senate. House Republicans say they would like to see their Senate colleagues filibuster any bill that doesn’t defund Obamacare.

Time is an issue for Boehner, Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). The House is in session next week, out the following week and on the day they return — Sept. 30 — the government’s coffers run dry. Their time off can be canceled. The soonest a new government funding bill can hit the floor could be next Thursday.

While confusion reigned on Wednesday afternoon, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said it is “not time to panic”

“We’ve got some time left here,” Rogers noted. “Conversations are taking place among the various elements” inside the House GOP Conference about how to move forward.

Part of the problem, according to Republicans, is that leadership refuses to admit that fully defunding Obamacare simply isn’t possible. Instead, leadership keeps allowing votes on the issue to placate hard-line conservatives. That strategy, though, has appeared to backfire as conservatives are more determined than ever to provoke a showdown.

Leadership, and some of the old guard, wants to grab members by their lapels and explain to them that Obamacare simply isn’t going away.

“Well, there’s lots of conversations that take place along those lines,” Rogers said.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a Boehner ally, said those who forced the speaker and Cantor to pull the CR on Wednesday have “talked to their constituency and convinced their constituency that they have magic wands and can wave them magically to get rid of Obamacare. I assume that’s why they feel like they can’t vote for something.”

Lauren French and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.