Senate repugicans Splinter

Lunatic Fringe 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., center, accompanied by Sen. Roy Blunt, r-Mo., left, talks to reporters about the fight over extending tax cuts following a political strategy session, Tuesday, July 10, 2012, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Whether it’s immigration reform, the budget, or President Obama’s nominees, a faction of more moderate repugican senators are increasingly splitting from both their leadership and the tea party and partnering with Democrats on key issues.The growing signs of division are remarkable after years of exceptional Senate repugican cabal unity under the reign of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (r-KY), during which minority use of the filibuster to thwart governance has soared to unprecedented heights.
This week, large numbers of repugicans, led by Sen. John McCain (r-AZ), broke with McConnell and voted with Democrats to secure the confirmation of Obama nominees to the Labor Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In all eight cloture and confirmation votes, McConnell voted “no.”
Nominee Tom Perez for labor secretary, overcame a repugican cabal filibuster by the thinnest of margins, 60-40. The six repugicans who joined Democrats in his favor, whom Democrats will look to for cooperation on other matters, were Sens. McCain, Bob Corker (TN), Lamar Alexander (TN), Susan Collins (ME), Mark Kirk (IL) and Lisa Murkowski (AK).
In a clear sign of boiling rank-and-file frustration, Corker reportedly cried “bullshit” loudly while McConnell was discussing the issue of nominations and Democrats’ nuclear option threat during a closed-door repugican cabal meeting on Wednesday. He later declined to apologize for it and said he’s “glad that that occurred.”
On immigration, 14 repugicans joined every Democrat in voting to comprehensively overhaul the system and offer unauthorized immigrants a path to citizenship.
On the budget, numerous repugican senators are urging wingnut colleagues to stop blocking conference negotiations with the House, and are pushing for a long-term budget agreement with Democrats that includes new revenues — anathema to the tea party.
McCain has led the dissent in each of these cases, earning effusive praise from leading Democratic senators and prompting jokes this week by Democratic aides that he is the new minority leader.
John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University, pointed to three apparent factors in the divisions: “[S]incere preferences about policy,” the outcome of the 2012 election, and the fact that some senators “value the institutions of the Senate.”
“They want to Senate to work better than it has been, and believe that confirming presidential nominees is part of that,” he said. “And they also value the filibuster, too. They want to preserve that feature of the Senate, and so a compromise on nominees was better than Reid’s using the nuclear option.”
Complicating matters for leadership is that McConnell and his No. 2, Sen. John Cornyn (r-TX), are both unpopular at home and face reelection next year. As a result, they’re working to ward off primary challengers by voting against Democratic initiatives as much as possible and avoiding the appearance of working with President Obama. That makes it harder for them to balance the concerns of rank and file members, who watched their party get crushed in a second consecutive presidential election and aren’t eager to spend another four years obstructing.
But it remains to be seen whether the divisions will usher in a new era of Senate cooperation, as McCain strikes a conciliatory posture with his 2008 rival on upcoming battles involving the debt ceiling and nominees to the influential D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
On nominations, McConnell had sought to so vastly redefine the parameters of a Senate minority’s obstructionist muscle that the beating he took this week ultimately amounts to a battle lost in a war he’s still comfortably winning. On immigration, senior repugicans tacitly gave reform their blessing, seemingly for the sake of the party, even as they voted against the legislation. On the budget, the larger repugican cabal divisions are between the Senate (where members are less enthusiastic about massive spending cuts) and the House.