Bloomberg/Business Week: Why John Boehner Won't Hold a Vote to Reopen the Government [View all]

[OmahaBlueDog]

... Since the early 1980s, however, political parties have become more homogenous. Once you can get a whole party to agree on something, party discipline becomes possible. Once it’s possible, you can wield it as a weapon.

When Democrats controlled the House in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Speaker Tip O’Neill forced the chair of the Rules Committee to answer to the speaker’s office, an arcane change with far-reaching consequences. The speaker—the leader of the dominant party in the House—began writing the rules for debate on every piece of legislation. After the mid-term elections of 1994, the parties became even more homogenous, and the new GOP Speaker, Newt Gingrich, continued the work of asserting party control. Where committee chairs had been passed down by seniority, Gingrich began appointing younger chairmen loyal to him and the leadership.

Then Dennis Hastert, the Republican Speaker during most of George W. Bush’s presidency, took this demand for loyalty to party still further. The Hastert Rule, an informal edict not codified in any book and yet still rigorously adhered to today, instructs the speaker not to bring any bill to the floor that does not have the support of the majority of the majority. The rule was simply the logical end of a long-term trend. The party—both parties—had become more important than the House’s bills. Even a passable bill, if it doesn’t pass with the consent of the party, is not worth passing.

Speakers have violated this rule in the past. John Boehner did it several times in the summer in order to get anything done. He knows, however, that every time he divides his own party on a vote, he endangers his position as speaker. As political scientist Jonathan Bernstein pointed out in June, Boehner is not constrained by the Hastert Rule. He is constrained by the realities of the speaker’s dais.

More at: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-02/why-john-boehner-wont-hold-a-vote-to-reopen-the-government?campaign_id=yhoo