Following a Tuesday of news coverage focusing on how House Republican leadership had figured out a way to both let their hardliners blow off some steam at President Obama and fund most of the government for nine months—the essence of responsible governing, we were told by the media—Wednesday's news coverage looked a little different. (Gee, who would've thought that Republican leadership isn't a reliable source on how successful Republican leadership will be at persuading their sizable nutjob caucus.)
See, Republican extremists aren't necessarily happy with getting just a symbolic vote saying Obama can't take the executive action on immigration that he is taking, regardless of how they symbolically vote. And they don't really want to fund the government or govern responsibly, anyway, so there's not much in this plan for them to like. Which means there's pressure on Speaker John Boehner to make his plan worse for the country by setting up more funding fights sooner:
“I think a lot of us, in discussion, we don’t see the purpose of having a long CR. Why not do it the first day we’re in session?” said Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) “I’m not sure it’s going to pass the way they are proposing it. I think it’s likely they are going to have to improve it if they want it to pass.” [...]
“The House needs to do the right thing and send over the short term bill with the defund language,” said [Sen. Mike] Lee spokesman Brian Phillips.
Yes, they want to pass something super short term and come back to the small question of funding the government again next month or the month after. And, who knows, maybe a few months after that:
“For me, it’s generally in appropriations the shorter the better,” [Rep. Tim Huelskamp] said.
Enough House Republicans see Boehner's plan as insufficiently conservative, in fact, that if he wants to pass it as is—and he does, if he doesn't want to spend all of next year fighting over whether to even fund the government rather than passing a lot of
"jobs" bills that don't create jobs—he might well have to rely on Democratic votes. The question then is whether Democrats would give him those votes. So far, House Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi isn't saying.
7:14 AM PT:
at noon, Cruz, King, Bachmann and other conservatives will speak out against the House leadership immigration plan
— @costareports