One of my favorite subjects is factions and the nature if divisions within American politics, and especially with American political parties. Very smart polisci guy John Judis has a piece in the New Republic that includes an analysis of the current divisions with the nation Republican Party - especially among Republicans in the House of Representatives. Remember that since House members are elected from relatively small districts, they are more likely to represent smaller, more ideologically clear constituents.
Judis argues that the compromises Obama made in the recent fiscal cliff deal - where certain issues like sequestration and dealing with the debt ceiling were postponed for two months - were designed to allow him to exploit these divisions when it comes time to negotiate. We will see whether his analysis is correct soon enough, but for now this seems to be a good way to understand the nature of House Republican Caucus. Remember that a party in Congress is only powerful if they are unified. Democrats made gains in the recent election and if a dozen or so Republicans vote with them on issues where they are unified - they win.
Here's Judis' full article, and here is his look at the three key divisions within the party in the House:
There are at least three different
kinds of divisions that have become visible. First is between the Senate
and the House. Senate Republicans, who are in a minority, have proven
more amenable to compromise on fiscal issues. Unlike most Republican
House members, many senators can’t count on being re-elected by solid
Republicans majorities. McConnell himself comes from a state where
Democrats still hold most of the state offices.
Secondly, there is a regional division in
the party between the deep South, which contains many of the diehard
House Republicans, and the Republicans from the Northeast, industrial
Midwest, and the Far West. In the House vote on the fiscal cliff,
Republican House members from the deep South opposed it by 83 to 10,
while Republicans from the Northeast favored it by 24 to one, and those
from the Far West by 17 to eight. After the Republican leadership
refused to bring a Sandy hurricane relief bill to the floor before the
end of the session – effectively killing it – New York Republican Peter
King called on New York and New Jersey Republicans to withhold donations to the GOP. New Jersey Governor Chris Christe blew his top at the House Republicans.
Third, there is a division among Republican lobbies, political
organizations and interest groups that surfaced in the wake of the
election and once again this week. It’s not easy to define, but it runs
between pro-business conservatives, on the one hand, and the right-wing
libertarians of the Tea Party and Club for Growth and their billionaire
funders. Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform gave their approval the
Senate bill. The Chamber of Commerce grudgingly endorsed the final
bill, and the National Federation of Independent Business said the tax
provisions were acceptable. The Club for Growth, the Koch Brothers’
Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks (which itself has fallen under
the sway of its most ideological elements), and the Tea Party Patriots
opposed any compromise.
These divisions don’t necessarily augur the kind of formal split that
wrecked the Whig Party in the 1850s. Nor do they suggest widespread
defection of Republicans into the Democratic Party as happened during
the 1930s. There is still far too much distance between, say, McConnell
and Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid. But they do suggest that a
process of erosion is under way that will weaken the Republicans’
ability to maintain a united front against Democratic initiatives. That
could happen in the debates over the sequester and debt ceiling if Obama
and the Democrats make the kind of public fuss that they did over
fiscal cliff.
This analysis applies only to Republicans in the US House. Texas Republicans are far more unified, so we will see little division among members of the Texas delegation - they are ideologically very similar. Same goes for the Texas House, though the nature of local issues makes divisions far more likely in the Texas Legislature, but - with some exceptions - for local policy reasons, not ideological ones. So this analysis does not apply to internal state politics.
