BOEHNER FENDS OFF DISSENT AS G.O.P. TAKES THE REINS
Jeremy W. Peters
WASHINGTON — Representative John A. Boehner beat back an embarrassing challenge to his speakership from aggrieved conservatives on Tuesday as Republicans assumed control of both houses of Congress, pledging to restore function and civility to a body that has become a symbol of disorder for most Americans.
Two dozen Republicans voted against Mr. Boehner, and one withheld his support, clouding what should have been a day of euphoria for the party after its definitive midterm election victory. It was the largest number of votes against a speaker from members of his or her own party in at least two decades.
But the defections on the right, which were double what the speaker withstood when he was elected two years ago, illustrated the serious challenges Republicans confront now that they own the political liability that comes with being the majority on Capitol Hill at a time when disgruntled voters are poised to turn against the party in power.
Addressing the House chamber after the vote, Mr. Boehner made no overt mention of the discord within his party, but urged his colleagues to set aside their differences and prove their skeptics wrong.
“They say that nothing is going to be accomplished here; the division is wider than ever, so gridlock will be even greater,” he said, his voice at times breaking with emotion. “No, this won’t be done in a tidy way. The battle of ideas never ends, and frankly never should.”
Despite the choppy start, Republicans begin the year with a commanding majority. The breadth of their election victories was on full display in the Capitol as members sloshed through a thick coat of fresh snow to begin business for the first day this year.
But even as new members were being sworn in amid pledges of comity and compromise, a showdown between Democrats and Republicans had already surfaced.
President Obama has said that he would veto the item that Republicans have made their first order of business: approving the long-stalled Keystone XL pipeline. Senate Democrats quickly followed suit by blocking a hearing on the pipeline that Republicans had hoped to hold on Wednesday, forcing them to delay the meeting by a day.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the new majority leader, urged Democrats to drop their objections and let the hearing proceed. “We all know that one of the things the Senate is best at doing is not doing much,” he said. “Why don’t we get started?”
House Republicans were less restrained, expressing fury about the president’s threat. “It’s toxic. It’s poisonous,” said Representative John L. Mica of Florida, insisting that the president had dashed hopes of bipartisan compromise on the first day of the new Congress. “The truth is he’s playing to his extreme environmental left.”
That anger may carry more force given that Republicans have their largest House majority since the post-World War II era, with 246 seats. In the Senate, where 12 freshman Republicans were sworn in on Tuesday, the party has 54 seats to the Democrats’ 46, including a lone Democratic freshman. Republicans had not controlled both chambers at once in eight years.
In some ways, the partisan fissures were evident even before the new Congress arrived in Washington on Tuesday. The November election swept out of office the last white Democrat in the Deep South and the last Democrat anywhere in rural Appalachia, both once Democratic strongholds.
By land mass, House Republicans now represent about 85 percent of the nation as Democrats become clustered in the more populous metropolitan areas and on the coasts. As that divide has widened over the years, polarization in Washington has increased as well.
The scene in the Capitol on Tuesday was teeming with ceremony and tradition. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in his formal role as president of the Senate, was on hand to swear in the new senators. He blended a conventional “Welcome to the Senate” with a number of humorous personal asides as they stepped up one by one to the well of the Senate chamber to shake his hand.
The atmosphere was heavier in the House. The vote on Mr. Boehner’s fate dragged on for more than an hour as the clerk read aloud the names of all House members.
A last-minute move by Representative Daniel Webster, Republican of Florida, to challenge Mr. Boehner hurt the speaker, most likely costing him more votes than he would have lost otherwise. Initially only two Republican congressmen rose up against Mr. Boehner, both of whom are considered on the fringe of the party and dismissed by leadership as gadflies: Louie Gohmert of Texas and Ted Yoho of Florida. But the entry of Mr. Webster, a more pragmatic Republican who has a cordial relationship with Mr. Boehner, came as somewhat of a surprise.