I'd be remiss if I didn't point you to Eve Fairbank's smart analysis of the House GOP leadership elections:
In a political moment when Republicans are bitterly split between the vanishing moderates, who believe that embracing their centrism is the only way to save the party, and the ascendant conservatives, who are itching to repurify the party along right-wing principles, Boehner maintains power - for now - by dancing between the two poles. "Boehner stays because he's acceptable to both sides -- the hard-core [conservatives] and the non-hard-cores," explains another Republican staffer. It's a pivot even Rahm, a former male ballerina, could envy.
In answering the question of why Boehner is still leader -- which baffled even veteran Democratic operatives, who felt, reasonably enough, that losing fifty seats in two years is a firing offense -- Fairbanks also explains why Boehner is not a very effective leader. Balanced between two poles of his caucus but not really asserting control over either, it's going to be hard for the tan, cigarette smoking* congressman to really move his caucus on legislation. Consider the example of the bailout bill, where, in the act of trying to have it both ways, Boehner let his caucus destroy the bill's chance of passing on the first vote, breaking his promise to the Democratic leadership that he would find enough votes to put the bailout over the top. While Boehner remains the face of the caucus, the rest of the new leadership is quite a bit further right than the previous session, suggesting a very obstinate minority that won't necessarily be swayed by their leader's blandishments.
-- Tim Fernholz
*According to my contract as a Washington-based journalist, I have to mention that Boehner has a tan and smokes every time I write about him. Weird, huh?
