This was supposed to be the easy part of September.

Congressional Republicans wanted to use the first week back from August recess to hammer President Barack Obama with two bipartisan votes showcasing the strong disapproval of his nuclear deal with Iran.


Instead, the GOP's plans have again morphed into a mess.

After a day of disarray in which Speaker John Boehner was again forced into a corner, Republicans settled on a three-pronged strategy. One vote would rebuke Obama for not disclosing the totality of the agreement to Congress; a second would try to prevent him from lifting sanctions on Iran.

Then, in a reversal, a third vote would be on a resolution of approval on the pact, designed to highlight majority opposition to the nuclear agreement. The problem with that element is that House Republicans will now be at odds with Senate Republicans, who plan to vote instead on a disapproval resolution.

It's a seemingly minor distinction, but their failure to get on the same page means Republicans may end up diluting their message of opposition to the accord.

“What we do up here is always a work in progress,” said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, in explaining the drama in the House on Iran.

Things aren’t about to get any easier. The battle to strip government funding from Planned Parenthood is already starting, with Boehner (R-Ohio) laying his mark in a private meeting that a shutdown would set back the anti-abortion rights movement.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has ruled out closing down the government for Planned Parenthood when funding runs out Sept. 30. But conservatives are digging in, calling it the fight of the fall. And looming just beyond that are fights over highway spending and the debt ceiling. Another government funding fight is expected in mid-December.

The plan to hold a vote of approval on the Iran deal, which Boehner was forced into, highlights several long-running narratives of this GOP majority. Depending on which Republican you talk to, either the rank and file are never happy, or the leadership is out of touch.

All summer long, rank-and-file members of the House Republican Conference were urging GOP leadership to reserve a full week to take up the Iran deal on the House floor. So House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) office set aside this four-day week to highlight what Republicans consider Obama’s flawed Iran deal. A full day of debate was scheduled for Thursday.

But trouble was surfacing on the horizon over the summer. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), who graduated at the top of his class at West Point and earned a law degree from Harvard, was pressuring the White House to disclose side arrangements hashed out between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who chairs a House Republican Israel caucus, had recently returned from a trip to Israel, where he met privately for 30 minutes with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Roskam is no stranger to internal House political battles. He was McCarthy’s chief deputy whip from 2011 to 2014, before losing resoundingly to Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) in a bitter race for House majority whip, the chamber’s No. 3 slot. Shortly before the end of the August recess, Roskam called GOP leaders and let them know: he was going to try to blow up the GOP leadership’s plan on Iran.

Roskam would return from Chicago on Tuesday afternoon and introduce a privileged resolution that would prevent Boehner from bringing the Iran agreement to the floor because Roskam believed Obama had not disclosed the entirety of the nuclear pact. He spoke with Boehner on Monday afternoon about the plan.

Republican leaders immediately knew they had a problem on their hands. Roskam isn’t just any dissident. He’s a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee who's deeply respected across the House Republican Conference. GOP brass knew they had to deal with him, unlike some constant conservative troublemakers. Pompeo is also held in high regard.

The predicament became clear to leaders around 9 a.m. Wednesday, when Boehner, McCarthy and Scalise got an earful from House Republicans about an Iran strategy they had once fought for. Roskam stood up and led the charge in the closed meeting.

GOP leadership quickly saw a movement away from their plan, and adopted the three-part strategy.

Both Roskam and Pompeo spoke out in approval during an emergency afternoon meeting at which GOP leadership presented the plan. Republicans would now be on the record on three elements of the accord instead of one.

"Here's what I know for sure,” Pompeo said upon leaving the meeting Wednesday afternoon. If Obama moves forward with the Iran deal, as he is expected to, Pompeo said, “The American people will be furious, and properly so because they will have a president who is brazenly violating the law with knowledge and intent and is putting Americans at risk providing $150 billion to terrorists when Congress told him he could not do it."

Other Republican lawmakers agreed with Roskam and Pompeo.

“It allows members to be on record this week of saying that they are either with the president on a deal that he negotiated,” said Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.), who is running for the U.S. Senate. “Or, it gives us an opportunity that we disagree with this president’s foreign policy when it comes to Iran.”

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, said he wouldn’t characterize Wednesday’s back-and-forth as internal party dysfunction.

“I just think the Senate has a process that is different than ours,” Stewart said. “That filibuster rule is very different than what the House operates under. It’s very frustrating to me and I’m not the only one who feels that way, but it changes the dynamic between the Senate and House, no doubt about it.”

But now, instead of the House GOP leadership's plan getting a vote, it will be one with Roskam's prints all over it — this just a year after he was booted from the party's hierarchy.

Lauren French, Burgess Everett and John Bresnahan contributed to this report.

