http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/house-republicans/disarray-watch-house-gop-leaders-leaking-on-each-other/House GOP Leaders Leaking On Each Other?
You know there’s serious disarray afoot among a party’s Congressional leaders when the principals and their staffs start leaking damaging info about each other, and that now seems to be happening among House GOP leaders.
Check out this nugget from Ben Pershing’s piece on increasing tensions among House Republicans. It appears that someone is trying to pin the blame for the House GOP’s politically-disastrous, numbers-free budget on John Boehner:
Privately, Cantor and the lawmaker tasked with writing the GOP budget, Rep. Paul D. Ryan, had urged the party to hold off going public until it could produce a finished product. Both men wanted a more detailed proposal with dollar figures that would make it a more defensible document. Boehner and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence disagreed, hoping to counter as quickly as possible Democrats’ charge that Republicans are “the Party of No.” The result was a botched rollout and bad press.
And someone wants to shift the blame for the botched budget rollout away from Eric Cantor.
Why the leak now? Dems, of course, are elevating Cantor as the face of the obstructionist opposition in a way they aren’t doing with Boehner — recall the full-scale Dem on Cantor’s worry about pols “overreacting” to the crisis.
Cantor’s staff seems generally more attuned than some other House GOP staffers to the potential effectiveness of the Dem attacks on the GOP as the “party of No.” Indeed, Cantor seems wary of being wholly lumped in with the rest of the leadership, and seems to want to preserve a bit of independence, given his obvious ambitions and designs on a political promotion down the road.