Minority GOP gets creative to flex muscle

WASHINGTON — Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, came to Washington in 1991 as a rabble-rousing Republican willing to disrupt the House to score points against powerful Democrats. Now, as the House Republican leader in a town again dominated by Democrats, he is back to his old tricks.

Trying to build opposition to a climate-change measure being considered as the Fourth of July recess loomed, Boehner commandeered the floor for an hour to mount an unofficial filibuster and to ridicule the legislation. He has sanctioned efforts by rank-and-file Republicans to tie up the House with dozens of procedural votes. During the debate on the economic stimulus, he threw a copy of the huge bill to the floor with a theatrical thump.

"There are times when the majority just does such outrageous things that you have to find a way to make your point to the American people," said Boehner, who began his House career as one of the so-called Gang of Seven, Republican upstarts who confronted Democrats over the House bank scandal and other institutional abuses.

Boehner has various motivations for using whatever means are at his disposal to make a political case. Republicans portray the climate measure as flawed and a threat to the economy. Sometimes, a little stagecraft can be the only way to get attention.

Then there is the issue of bolstering morale among his beleaguered House colleagues, who said they were energized by Boehner's performance against the climate measure.

"Our side has been waiting for somebody to swing back," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who predicted Boehner's efforts would elevate him in national Republican circles.

Democrats, however, said Boehner's tactics smack of desperation. "Obviously, he talked for a long time and did not persuade a majority of the people," Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, a member of the Democratic leadership, said after Boehner's scathing attack on the climate bill failed to scare off enough lawmakers to defeat it.

He grabbed the floor by stretching his rights as Republican leader. Debate time is carefully meted out in the House, but the speaker and the two party leaders can traditionally talk for as long they like even though they may have only been formally allotted one minute. Such remarks typically run five or 10 minutes.

In Boehner's case, he was given two minutes, which he extended to more than an hour as he picked almost page by page through a 300-page amendment that had been added to the climate-change bill early the day of the vote. An hour during a House floor debate is virtually unheard of for one person.

The stunt did not quite reach the level of one by former Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, a fellow member of the Gang of Seven, who wore a bag over his head on the House floor in professed embarrassment at overdrafts run up by his colleagues at the House bank. But it was certainly reminiscent of Boehner's days of using C-SPAN coverage to full advantage.

Republicans are regularly reaching back for their Greatest Hits in challenging Democrats. A Rube Goldberg-like chart produced by Boehner's office showing the enforcement of the climate bill bore more than a passing resemblance to a convoluted Republican chart that helped undo the Clinton administration health-care proposal in 1993.

On Thursday, House Republicans reprised a famous 1984 Senate race advertisement to show bloodhounds in search of elusive jobs supposedly being created by the Obama administration's economic-stimulus package.

Republicans think they can turn the climate fight to their favor. Boehner and his aides said his floor show had brought thousands of favorable calls to his office, was a hit among Twitter followers and had been seen thousands of times on YouTube.

"This is where the new media tools do help us," Boehner said.

His early confrontations with Democrats earned him a spot in the leadership when House Republicans took over in 1994. But he lost that slot in a 1999 shake-up and spent time in exile before winning back a top job in 2006, when Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority leader at the time, ran into trouble.

His comrades in the Gang of Seven — Nussle, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Scott Klug of Wisconsin, Charles H. Taylor of North Carolina and John Doolittle and Frank Riggs of California — are gone from Congress, leaving Boehner to carry on.

"I think showing the American people that there are people willing to take a principled stand in Washington is a very good thing," he said.