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 And if U.S. House Speaker John Boehner wants to keep his job next
year, he had better be sure Grothman and his fellow House of
Representatives newcomers are happy.
Grothman, the expected winner in a tight Republican primary for the
right to succeed 73-year-old Representative Thomas Petri in
Wisconsin, is one of more than a dozen vocal conservatives gunning
to replace more moderate or pragmatic retiring House Republicans in
November's midterm elections.
Their arrival could mean even more headaches for Boehner, who has
struggled in recent years to keep his fractious caucus together on
critical battles over tax and spending bills, and most recently on
legislation to secure border funding.
A further shift to the right in the House, continuing a trend that
began with the Tea Party's surge in 2010, could signal another round
of high-stakes political showdowns early in the new year and
ultimately threaten Boehner's leadership.
One of the first votes the new House conservatives will face in
March will be on raising the federal debt limit -- a topic that
already has produced two grinding partisan battles that rattled
financial markets and threatened U.S. credit ratings.
With Republicans now holding 234 House seats, it takes only 17
Republican "no" votes to sink legislation without Democratic
support, giving the growing conservative bloc immense clout in
legislative negotiations.
"It's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, for the next
speaker to get to 218 without Democratic votes," said James Thurber,
a political scientist at American University, referring to the
majority needed to pass legislation in the House.
But turning to Democrats more often to pass critical budget,
transportation or immigration bills next year is a path toward
potential mutiny by conservatives, Thurber said.
"There's just nobody in the middle anymore and nobody that's willing
to cross parties to vote because of this polarization," Thurber
said.
Boehner could face a challenge to his speaker position when House
members choose their leadership after the November elections.
Boehner said this summer that he was "all in" to seek another term
as speaker, apparently quashing speculation that he has grown weary
of the job.
It's been a rocky four years since Boehner took up his gavel in
2011. To remain speaker, Boehner has had to give in to caucus
demands and find ways to pass more conservative legislation, even if
it had little chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate.
After passing a tax increase on the wealthy and $50.7 billion in aid
for Superstorm Sandy largely with Democratic votes last year, he won
back support by agreeing to the Tea Party's effort to withhold
funding from Obama's healthcare law.
The move led to a 16-day federal government shutdown -- but Boehner
won points for listening to the conservative sentiment of his
caucus.
SHAKING UP WASHINGTON
"I'm more conservative than John Boehner," Grothman told Reuters
while greeting voters at a pancake house in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, a
wealthy Milwaukee suburb.
Grothman's narrow primary victory, which is expected to be confirmed
this week, puts him on a path to take over for Petri in the heavily
Republican eastern Wisconsin district he has represented since 1979.
Some district conservatives expressed frustration with Petri's
willingness to compromise with Democrats. He chairs a House
subcommittee on highway construction, normally one of the few areas
of bipartisan cooperation in Congress, and recently advocated higher
fuel taxes to replenish the Highway Trust Fund -- a move that most
Republicans have ruled out.
"We've got to take the country back," said Gene Weyer, a retired
corporate executive from Manitowoc, Wisconsin. "The country is going
wrong in so many different ways. We need people like Glenn to get us
back between the bumpers of the bowling alley, and stay out of the
gutters."
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The election of the conservative Grothman would mirror recent trends
in Congress, where the middle ground has been shrinking for decades.
Voting patterns analyzed by academics and posted on Voteview.com
show the number of moderates in the House - those who have crossed
party lines in their voting - has shrunk from nearly half of House
members in the 1970s to less than 10 percent in 2013. That shift
has been aided by the drawing of legislative boundaries that make
Republican districts more "safe" by concentrating conservative
voters and shifting more liberal areas to neighboring Democratic
districts.
And it has accelerated in recent years with the rise of the
conservative Tea Party, which has made opposition to President
Barack Obama and support for its agenda of smaller government,
reduced federal spending and lower taxes a litmus test for
Republican lawmakers.
While the Republican establishment has turned back several Tea Party
challengers in Senate primaries this year, the movement has had more
success in House contests. Its highest-profile victory was by
political newcomer Dave Brat, an economics professor who toppled
Boehner's No. 2, Eric Cantor, in Virginia.
Other Tea Party candidates who appear headed to Washington include
Baptist preacher Mark Walker, who won a Republican primary in North
Carolina to replace retiring Howard Coble, and Gary Palmer, a
conservative think-tank activist backed by the influential anti-tax
group Club for Growth. He is likely to replace Spencer Bachus of
Alabama. For more details on candidates, see [ID:nL2N0QO05Z].
All were influential supporters of Boehner. But the Tea Party
candidates headed to Washington in their place often put a higher
priority on spending cuts and debt reduction than on party loyalty.
FIGHTING OBAMA
"Republican voters want to vote for conservative candidates who want
to stand up to Republican leadership. And that's me," said Grothman,
a Wisconsin state senator who introduced a bill that would
officially list single parenthood as a contributing factor to child
abuse and once derided Kwanzaa as a "supposed" holiday that
African-Americans don't care about.
The seasoned lawmaker with 20 years in Madison has been instrumental
in implementing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's conservative
agenda, including the roll-back of collective bargaining for public
workers, along with state tax cuts for manufacturers and farmers.
In Washington, he said his focus would be cutting and reforming
welfare programs that he says are helping to break down the
traditional family structure by creating financial penalties for
marriage. He added that welfare programs are also attracting illegal
immigrants, who should be immediately sent back to their home
countries - including the thousands of detained Central American
children.
"Immigration is a huge problem," he said. "It's going to destroy the
country," he said. "We are attracting people here to use the
benefits, which will both break the country and change its culture."
(Reporting By David Lawder; Editing by John Whitesides and Caren
Bohan)
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