I'm surprised these two didn't make a move. The guy on the left is #3 - Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy. The guy on the right is #2 - Majority Leader Eric Cantor. They've positioned themselves to the right of Boehner and seem poised to ride the conservative wing of the Republican Party upwards, but will this make the party weaker?
It's an ironic problem when a party is in the majority. It tends to splinter.
The Democratic Caucus on the other hand - at least according to this report - might be unusually unified. If Republicans split on a bill important to the leadership, they will need a few Democrats to pass it. But if Democrats can stay unified, they can prevent that from happening and extract concessions for their votes:
“The minority in the House has very few ways of getting things on the agenda,” Don Wolfensberger, director of the Congress Project at the Wilson Center, a former top staffer for the House Rules Committee and a CQ Roll Call contributing writer, said recently.
But Pelosi is beginning to maximize her leverage by keeping her troops unified, making Republicans find the votes for a majority in their own conference.
“There are few people as strategic as Nancy Pelosi. She has expressed to her colleagues and to others that if Democrats are going to be asked to support something, the number of Democrats who will be able to support something depends on the something they are being asked to support,” said Rep. Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“If you need Democrats, you need to tell us what’s in the deal, and if there is an appetite in the caucus, then the caucus will provide the votes. If there is no appetite in the caucus, then you can’t count on us for the votes. Nobody knows how to get to 218 more than Nancy Pelosi, and so she’s been applying herself to see how you get to 218 to get this solved in a way that is fair,”
