Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner was once considered one of the most conservative lawmakers in Congress. But when he started working with Democrats to get bills passed, the Tea Party wing of the GOP got mad.
Now, South Florida Republicans are defending Boehner's record.
South Florida U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo says Tea Party Republicans are to blame for deceiving their voters into thinking they could repeal Obamacare or defund Planned Parenthood.
“It’s clear that some of our colleagues have over promised back home. They come back, they realize they can’t deliver and blame it on our leadership,” Curbello says. “That’s just not fair. If we’re going to be successful in moving forward a conservative agenda and make the American people proud, we need to set realistic expectations and we need to be honest with the voters.”
Now that the GOP is picking new leaders, many conservatives are demanding leadership candidates meet a purity test on a variety of hot button issues. Curbelo says that’s not realistic.
“I don’t agree here on every issue with anyone so I’m certainly not going to put that litmus test for the Speaker of the House or for the Majority Leader. Again people need to start being honest. The House alone cannot control the government,” Curbelo says.
This public fight within the Republican party has some analysts predicting it could weaken the GOP, but South Florida Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart argues it’s actually strengthening the party.
“I think it’s very positive, it’s good, it’s wonderful to have tough, strong, aggressive competition. That’s why you have the process and that’s why you have elections,” says Diaz-Balart.
Speaker Boehner’s replacement will be picked by House Republicans first. Then the entire House votes for his successor later this month. Diaz-Balart says that’s when the entire party will need to put differences aside and show the nation a unified front.
“What hurts us is if we go to the floor after we have this process and then people decide that, ‘Oh we’re now going to nominate somebody else or vote for somebody else,’ and obviously all you are doing then is empowering the leadership of the other party, the adversary party, in this case the Democrats,” says Diaz-Balart.
Two Floridians are among the seven or so lawmakers in the running for leadership positions. Congressman Dennis Ross from Lakeland is running for to be the party’s whip -- or vote counter. And Congressman Daniel Webster from Winter Garden is running for s
peaker. Webster was speaker of Florida’s legislature in the late 1990s. He’s running on a platform to decentralize power in Washington -- like what he was able to do in Tallahassee.
“Most legislative bodies are based on power a few people on top of a pyramid of power, basically control everything that happens. I was in the legislature a long time. I was able to overturn that when I became the speaker of the house in Florida,” Webster says.
But neither Floridian is garnering support from South Florida Republicans, even though having leaders from Florida could make the delegation more powerful. South Florida Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says it’s nothing personal. While she respects Webster, she says he’s appealing more to the far right.
“He’s got an important voice and he represents an important wing of our party. So I wish him success in what he is trying to do to satisfy that conservative branch of our party but, [he] doesn’t represent our whole party,” Ros-Lehtinen says.
Ros-Lehtinen and South Florida’s other Republicans are looking beyond Florida. They want California’s Kevin McCarthy to be the next speaker.
“Kevin understands that to be Speaker of the House does not mean that you just pull on for one part of our wing or even our party. You bring the parties together. You work in a bipartisan way. We cannot have a dysfunctional Congress,” Ros-Lehtinen says.
Moderate Florida lawmakers like Ros-Lehtinen are hoping to convince the new party leaders that there’s a critical mass of lawmakers who want them to govern in the middle. But the moderates are facing off against the vocal and energetic Tea Party. Whoever wins this internal battle could help a Republican capture the White House -- or they could embarrass the party and keep the GOP locked out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for another four years.
