"Some of the new GOP members are in election mode even before they’ve taken office, painting themselves as reasonable, bipartisan figures." Yeah, sure-- the proof is in the pudding.

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The Obama Republicans?
More GOP House members must defend Democratic-friendly districts.
By Alex Isenstadt, November 30, 2014

About a week after the Republican midterm romp, nearly 20 soon-to-be House GOP freshmen huddled for a private lunch on the third floor of the Capitol Hill Club. The mood was jubilant: Each had prevailed in a swing district, exploiting deep unhappiness with President Barack Obama and angst over the country’s future.

But as they dug into platters of lasagna, salad and chicken, the newbies were given some sobering news. GOP officials explained that they would be among Democrats’ top 2016 targets — when they’d be up against a more diverse electorate — and they needed to start preparing now.

“The message,” said one aide who was in the room, “was, ‘Don’t bask in the glow of victory.’”

When the new Congress takes the oath in January, Republicans could occupy as many as 247 seats, giving them their most dominant House majority in over 80 years. But it will also usher in an expanded group of Republicans from Democratic-friendly districts, a shift, GOP operatives say, that will reorder the politics of the chamber.

The new Republican Conference will include 26 members from districts that Obama won in 2012, and 47 lawmakers from districts that Mitt Romney won by less than 10 percentage points. In the previous Congress, just 17 Republican incumbents were in districts that Obama won and 44 in seats Romney won by less than 10 points.

The rise of swing-district Republicans could strengthen the hand of Speaker John Boehner against hard-line conservatives and create a new incentive for compromise with Democrats on issues with centrist appeal.

The GOP’s slimmer majority the past two years forced the speaker into repeated showdowns with tea party members whose overwhelmingly conservative districts insulated them from a political backlash. The incoming faction of moderate-minded lawmakers, enjoying no such cushion, will give Boehner more room to maneuver.

But this will create new complications for the GOP. The only question the past year was how many seats the party would seize from Democrats. Now the script is flipped. Even the most bullish Republicans acknowledge they’ve maxed out their majority and now must protect their politically vulnerable lawmakers, who will face pressure to distinguish themselves from the party’s conservative wing.

“Republicans won a larger majority, and that gives them more elbow room when it comes to negotiating. What the majority of the majority means today is different than what it meant yesterday,” said Brian Walsh, a former National Republican Congressional Committee political director who now heads a prominent House GOP-aligned super PAC. “I think where the difficulty presents itself is going to be on the big national issues, where the blue district members are going to have to defend themselves and break through their party.”

“It’s the big national issues that are going to create some divisions in the party,” he added. “And those will create some challenges.”

Those issues, Republicans say, include, most importantly, immigration, but also tax cuts and government spending.

Some of the new GOP members are in election mode even before they’ve taken office, painting themselves as reasonable, bipartisan figures.

Several have broken with their party on immigration. Florida Republican Carlos Curbelo, who won in a district that Obama carried in 2012, said after the election that he supports an overhaul that would create a path to citizenship for undocumented workers and their children and was open to Obama’s executive order.

And in Nevada, Republican Cresent Hardy, who prevailed in a district that Obama won by 11 points, was more critical ahead of the president’s immigration order but told the Las Vegas Sun that he backs comprehensive reform with a path to citizenship.

At the other end of the House Republican ideological spectrum, Rep. Steve King of Iowa, an outspoken conservative, denounced Obama’s executive order on immigration last month as an “unconstitutional executive amnesty edict,” and Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, called it “an offense to the Constitution.”

Other incoming House Republicans are already going out of their way to showcase their bipartisan bona fides. Republican Elise Stefanik, a former George W. Bush aide who was elected to an upstate New York seat, has held meetings and photo ops with the state’s two Democratic senators. She also released a statement heaping praise on the retiring Democratic congressman whose seat she won, Bill Owens, for his “legacy of bipartisanship.”

“I think there is an appetite to reach across the aisle, especially among members in some of the more hard-fought districts,” Stefanik said in an interview.

Another incoming House Republican from a swing New York district, Lee Zeldin, said he’d be unlikely to join other lawmakers who might be hungering for another fiscal battle with his party’s leadership — even if he isn’t entirely happy with the budget being proposed.

“There may be times when I disagree with leadership and other colleagues on a particular vote,” said Zeldin, a state senator. “But I don’t want to disagree just to disagree.”

Stefanik and Zeldin will be part of a nine-member New York Republican delegation, the party’s largest in the liberal-friendly state in a decade. Some top party strategists are counseling lawmakers there and elsewhere to focus on passing small-scale, easy-to-approve legislation so they can point to tangible accomplishments come election season.

“I think members in swing seats have got to put some points on the board, so they have things they can show their electorates,” said former Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, a past NRCC chairman.

The just-elected Republicans will face other challenges. At the post-election lunch, which was organized by the NRCC, party strategists warned incoming lawmakers that the 2016 presidential race guarantees they’ll have to win over a much more challenging electorate. They were given handouts detailing how voter turnout in each of their districts is likely to be altered, according to two sources present. There was also a presentation from John Rogers, who oversees voter targeting research for the committee, and Gerrit Lansing, the organization’s digital director.

Andrea Bozek, an NRCC spokeswoman, declined to comment on the lunch but said the committee is “already working with new members and their teams to ensure they hit the ground running.”

Democrats, by contrast, have few vulnerable members remaining after the disastrous 2010 and 2014 midterms. Come January, only five House Democrats will represent districts that Romney won, and 11 districts that Obama carried by less than 10 points.

With far fewer seats to defend, Democrats will have the luxury of focusing their resources on targeting Republicans in liberal or moderate districts.

The new GOP lawmakers will also be running for reelection as a potentially divisive Republican presidential primary unfolds, likely highlighting some of the party’s loudest and most conservative voices — a situation that already has caught the attention of Democratic strategists.

“Republicans in the 26 districts that President Obama won should be especially worried that when the Republican presidential primary races to the right, their constituents will be looking [to Democrats] for a reasonable alternative,” said Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, the incoming Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman.

For all the challenges 2016 presents, the new GOP lawmakers insist they’re not concerned. At least not yet.

“As long as we do our job well, I’m not worried about 2016,” Zeldin said. “We’re just going to have to work hard.”
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