The Leadership Struggle
Currie, Duncan
The Leadership Struggle One race a Republican's sure to win. by Duncan Currie For a former talk-radio host, Mike Pence sure speaks softly and politely. A three-term Indiana congressman, Pence, 47,...
...Election Night trouncing, and with Speaker Dennis Hastert declining to stand for a leadership position in the 110th Congress, House Republicans have a chance to elevate both Pence and Shadegg, 57, into their top two slots...
...This group also includes Jeff Flake of Arizona, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Jeb Hensarling of Texas, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Adam Putnam of Florida, and others...
...Cantor is one of the GOP's Young Turks, a new generation of House conservatives who have become strong advocates of spending discipline and market-oriented entitlement reform...
...Last Friday the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Flake urging Republicans to "reemerge as the party of ideas" and resist being "assistant hirelings of big government...
...Democrats are sure to use the Abramoff cudgel against any Republican with close links to DeLay...
...Blunt's support is less certain...
...Blunt won a plurality of first-round votes, then lost to Boehner in a runoff...
...They will be up against Boehner, the current majority leader, and Blunt, 56, the current majority whip, respectively...
...Pence also voted in favor of the massive 2002 farm bill, which Boehner strongly opposed...
...Despite Pence's popularity on the right, Boehner, who turns 57 this month, must be considered the favorite for leader...
...Boehner appears to have widespread backing from the caucus...
...Pence has declared for minority leader...
...A three-term Indiana congressman, Pence, 47, describes himself as "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican—in that order...
...Both would be best advanced, he felt, if he remained Republican Study Committee boss...
...The obvious question now is: Will Republicans blame Boehner for the election debacle...
...But the four key players appear to be Boehner, Pence, Blunt, and Shadegg...
...The reason is simple: House Republicans probably want at least one fresh face in their two most senior posts...
...His voting record is similar to Pence's, but not identical...
...This is just speculation, of course...
...My passion is my young family," Pence told me...
...In fact, Pence has proposed a compromise plan that combines tougher border security with an eventual guest-worker program...
...That message may find a receptive audience amidst the postelection fallout...
...Echoing Flake, we can expect Pence and Shadegg to adopt one of the Democrats' mantras from 2006: "It's time for a change...
...As head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, he's also become the sentinel of GOP budget hawks and government trimmers...
...My other passion is to serve the conservative cause...
...Last winter Boehner also painted himself as an anti-pork crusader: He had never voted for a federal highway bill and had long been critical of farm subsidies...
...As we go to press on Friday, November 10, rumors are floating around to the effect that if Blunt thought he might lose, he would drop out and make room for Chief Deputy Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia...
...But he also had close ties to K Street lobbying, and GOP reformers were hardly enthusiastic about his candidacy...
...But now, in the aftermath of their Duncan Curie is a reporter at The Weekly Standard...
...Surely the GOP leadership didn't take corruption scandals seriously enough...
...Flake endorsed both of them in his op-ed...
...In the end, he wound up endorsing Republican Policy Committee chief John Sha-degg of Arizona, a fierce conservative first elected with the vaunted GOP Class of 1994...
...Other Republicans are working to sway the races, and at least one, Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton of Texas, has announced his own campaign for leader...
...Some argue that Cantor has a better shot than Blunt at beating Shadegg...
...First elected in 1990, he burst onto the scene with the so-called Gang of Seven, a group of freshmen Republicans who zealously probed the House bank scandal...
...Shadegg for minority whip...
...When I interviewed him last January, shortly after Tom DeLay stepped down as House majority leader, many were wondering why Pence hadn't launched a bid to fill DeLay's post...
...It was a three-way vote | last winter, with Republicans = splitting their ballots among J Shadegg, acting majority < leader Roy Blunt of Missouri, and Ohio's John Boehner...
...Although both men recently voted to build a 700-mile fence along part of the U.S.-Mexican border, neither is a hardliner on immigration...
...Some might...
...Last winter, Blunt came under criticism for being too pork-friendly...
...But unlike Boehner, Blunt was the whip under Tom DeLay, which makes it easy for Blunt's opponents to cast him as symbolic of the Old Guard...
...Others might object that Boehner had been majority leader for less than a year—what could he have done to avert the anti-Republican wave...
...Whether it will translate into votes for Pence and Shadegg remains to be seen...
...Putnam, 32, is seeking to move up from policy committee head to conference chairman...
...If Boehner looks poised to win the leader's race, many feel that will dampen Roy Blunt's chances of staying on as GOP whip...
...Shadegg finished a distant third, which many attributed to his late entry into the race...
...Like Boehner and Pence, he and John Shadegg have broadly similar voting records...
...Pence voted against the final version of the No Child Left Behind education bill and against the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, while Boehner helped author No Child Left Behind and supported the new Medicare entitlement...
...We'll know more in the days prior to the vote scheduled for November 17...
...But while that may dent Boehner's image among grassroots Republicans, it's less clear that it will hurt him among his House colleagues...
Vol. 12 • November 2006 • No. 10
