Weigel

The tiny rebellion started early in the roll call, when the chair presiding over the House called on Rep. Justin Amash. Every Republican was supposed to vote John Boehner for speaker. But the Michigan sophomore cast a vote for Rep. Raul Labrador, an Idaho sophomore who happened to be sitting stony-faced next to him. The House floor filled with awkward "Oooohs" and the occasional "Who?"

The early part of the alphabet turned out to be trouble. Rep. Paul Broun voted for Allen West—who lost his seat last year—to become speaker. John Bridenstine, a new member from Oklahoma who upset an incumbent in a 2012 primary, voted for Eric Cantor. When Cantor's turn came, he said "John. Boehner." with the tone of voice you'd use on a telemarketer who put you on hold for three hours.

But that didn't stop the dissents. Rep. Louie Gohmert voted for West; Rep. Steve Pearce and Rep. Ted Yoho voted for Cantor; Rep. Tom Massie, elected with help from Ron Paul's PAC, voted for Amash. Rep. Tim Huelskamp voted for former Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, and anti-war Rep. Walter Jones voted for former Comptroller General David Walker, though the name was so unfamiliar that the chair made him repeat it. Reps. Mick Mulvaney and Raul Labrador didn't bother voting. For a few frantic moments it looked like defections would force a second ballot—something that has not happened for 90 years—but a few stragglers (Michele Bachmann included) showed up late to end the damn thing.

Nancy Pelosi lost votes, too, as two Blue Dog Democrats went for their colleague Jim Cooper; Cooper himself went for "retired Gen. Colin Powell"; and Rep. John Barrow of Georgia went for his iconic colleague John Lewis. But the defections held Boehner's vote to 220 in a conference of 233 Republicans. The defectors, in exchange for two years of ire from leadership, just wanted to bloody the guy's nose.

UPDATE: David Walker was nice enough to give me a reaction to his unexpected vote: "I was surprised and appreciate Congressman Jones' vote. We did not speak about it in advance. Congrats to Speaker Boehner."

Nearly four years ago, Newsweek -- then edited by Jon Meacham -- gave a cover to David Frum, where he inveighed against the nihilism of anti-Obama Republicans. Conservatives laughed it off. What did David Frum know about them, really? What would it do to Republicans if they compromised instead of opposing Barack Obama?

Today, Newsweek has basically the same story, only written by conservative radio host Michael Medved, and bolstered by years of conservative attacks on the president -- which didn't win them the election. Medved warns that Republicans have been driven "blind," unable and unwilling to negotiate wins anymore, because too many believe that a "theory of Obama’s destroy-America agenda links to his father’s undeniable anti-colonialist and Third World socialist outlook."

[T]hat blindness stems from the lingering fear that any perceived success for Obama involves inevitable harm to America’s prospects for prosperity, because the president yearns to crash the economy as step one of imposing a new socialist system. Abandoning this delusion will not only allow the GOP to improve its political prospects but will foster a more realistic and constructive role in governance.

And yes, it's strange that this is presented as breaking news. Keep in mind, though, some of the theories that girded anti-Obama campaigns in 2012. He'd have "more flexibility" if he won again, he'd ban guns (the NRA came up with that one), he'd abolish America's nukes. Dinesh D'Souza's 2016, a serious hit at the box office, theorized that Obama was purposefully weakening the United States to bring it in line with poor countries.

The 113th U.S. Senate begins today, and there's been speculation -- all well-sourced -- that it might start with a fight over the filibuster. That might still happen. Technically, it might still happen "today." By that, I mean it may happen on January 22.

This gets confusing. The Senate's first day begins at noon, with the swearing-in of new senators. The day doesn't end, however, until Harry Reid says it ends, and the Senate adjourns. And Reid has announced that when "work" is over this afternoon, the Senate will go into recess, allowing this day to roll over. That matters, because only on the first day of business can the Senate vote on its rules package, with a mere 51-vote majority needed to approve them.

So, neither Democrats nor Republicans plan a fight today. Democrats who favor reform plan to spend the next two weeks building opposition to the "McCain-Levin" plan -- a "compromise" supported by one of the recalictrant Democrats -- and holding onto 51 votes for Sen. Jeff Merkley's plan, which would force those who filibuster to actually stand and talk. HuffPost says the 51 votes are there; I've heard divergent things about Sen. Jack Reed and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, but that was before Feinstein said she'd reintroduce the eminently filibuster-able assault weapons ban.

Merkley may release the hard details of his reform plan tonight.

In a few hours, the 113th Congress will get started. The most obvious potential drama? How many "no" or "present" votes there'll be for John Boehner, and whether 51 Democrats pass rules reform in the Senate.

Jerry Nadler endorses the Platinum Coin option.

"There is specific statutory authority that says that the Federal Reserve can mint any non-gold or -silver coin in any denomination, so all you do is you tell the Federal Reserve to make a platinum coin for one trillion dollars, and then you deposit it in the Treasury account, and you pay your bills," Nadler said in a telephone interview this afternoon.

The White House insists that it won't just "invoke the 14th Amendment" and ignore Congress's debt limit threats. It also says it will refuse to negotiate over the limit. So nothing too wacky can be ruled out.

Political scientists challenge the popular "Big Sort" theory -- that like-minded people have clustered, as seen in the presidential vote swings of counties. I'm not wholly convinced.

An investigation of the Zero Dark Thirty script! That'll go real well, and set some nice precedent.

Brian Stelter's scoop here, about the sale of Current.tv to Al Jazeera, shatters the irony-meter.

Mr. Gore and his partners were eager to complete the deal by Dec. 31, lest it be subject to higher tax rates that took effect on Jan. 1, according to several people who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But the deal was not signed until Wednesday.

And Rep. Jan Schakowsky's errant tweet will make your day.

Tonight, for the last time, the sun will set on the 112th Congress. The new House, elected by voters who meant to put the Democrats into power but lived in the wrong districts, will contain seven fewer Republicans than the last one -- a total of 234. With this in mind I thumbed back through the Pledge to America, the governing document unveiled with trumpets and fanfare and a no-ties press conference before the GOP's 2010 win. The new, rebranded GOP made a lot of promises about how they'd govern and how they'd (to borrow a phrase) fix the debt.

It didn't quite work out. Without going into every cranny of the pledge, you can see the highlights.

All legislative text must be posted online for 3 days prior to voting. If you've paid any attention to our current crises, you've noticed that bills seem to rocket from the Secret Talks to the House floor. That's because the Rules Committee can take a bill and rescue it from the three-day rule. And it has done so, whenever necessary.

We will require each bill moving through Congress to include a clause citing the specific constitutional authority upon which the bill is justified. Republicans pulled that off, usually just citing Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. When it got dicey -- like bill of attainder-esque stuff to defund liberal groups -- they cited Art I Sec 8 some more.

We will let any lawmaker — Democrat or Republican — offer amendments to reduce spending. Done! Unfortunately for everybody, after a few months the only big spending bills that passed were ugly compromises that no one dared to slow down with amendments.

We will end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with "must-pass" legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. There was that whole debt limit ordeal. See also "We will fight efforts to use a national crisis for political gain."

The House passed H. Res. 9, a resolution instructing House committees to develop legislation replacing the job-killing health care law. It did, but because Democrats in the Senate opposed the repeal bill, the action team never got anywhere with the replacement.

With common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to prestimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone. They did cut $100 billion from the FY2012 baseline, but never got close to "2008 levels" of spending -- thwarted by Democrats, and not helped by Paul Ryan's budgets.

No more troop funding bills held up by unrelated policy changes, or extraneous domestic spending and pork-barrel projects. Promise kept! By and large, all of the national security promises were kept, or at least the party made college tries before being shut down.

We will continue to hold weekly votes on spending cuts. They quietly ceased this gimmick in 2012.

Be fair: With control of the House, and nothing else, Republicans were never going to get what they wanted. But they responded to the challenge by using every possible crisis moment to get leverage. They even created a crisis moment, demanding that a debt limit increase be matched by commensurate spending cuts. Unlike the mid-1990s, when a Republican Congress produced budgets that Bill Clinton had to work with, the 2011-2012 slog saw Paul Ryan's budgets die in the Democratic Senate. As Jonathan Allen puts it, the Republicans "wracked up more processes than policies" as they tried to find ways around the impasse. In the process, as the polls suggest, they alienated roughly nine in ten Americans.

Gov. Chris Christie's afternoon press conference was everything you could expect or hope for from the guy. For 20-odd minutes, he lit into "the House majority and its Speaker, John Boehner," for telling him "as late as last night, 9 o'clock," that there'd be a vote moving forward the Hurricane Sandy relief bills. Egged on by reporters -- who could blame them? -- Christie ridiculed the "palace intrigue" and the "fake" crisis that had occupied Washington. The longest video I've found comes from a YouTube user who seems to have belatedly realized how incredible this was and hit "record" part of the way through, like flipping through channels and starting the VHS recorder after seeing that the good part of The Dirty Dozen is on.

This is a stellar use of star power, and it underscores just how lazy the median D.C. pol is when it comes to explaining what it needs. Before he gets into the serious calling out, Christie explains that Eric Cantor had split up the bill into portions that would attract different constituencies. "The theory was there were many people in the Republican caucus -- a majority, or more -- who would vote for the $27 billion," he says, referring to the National Flood Insurance fund money and some more aid, "less that would vote for the additional $33 [billion]." Indeed. Republican leaders were aware of how little appetite there was for disaster aid, and Cantor personally had been burned before when he demanded offsets to pay for tornado aid in Missouri.

But instead of explaining this, Republicans allowed a familiar narrative -- oh, the bill's full of pork and waste! -- to creep out. Christie mocks the narrative in the single boldest part of this rant. The "pork," he points out, was $600 million in a total $60 billion package -- one percent of the total. The Republicans who got angry about that, he says, are dupes. "Those guys should spend a little more time reading the information we send and a little less time reading the talking points sent by their staff."

That's quite an ask. Making fun of waste in an omnibus bill is one of the GOP's most effective tactics. It was key to the strategy against the 2009 stimulus bill, making the "porkiest" parts of the bill famous, then forcing Democrats to denounce them, creating an impression of disarray and shame. And here Christie admits that it's a sort of cheap argument, not worth sinking legislation over.

UPDATE: Boehner's office now pledges a Friday vote on the smaller chunk of Sandy relief -- $9 billion for flood insurance -- then more votes on January 15. Because the current Congress ceases to exist at 11:59 a.m. tomorrow, the new House bill will have to be passed in the Senate, too, then auto-penned by Obama.

I break my rule against listicles for this special occasion.

10. HR 6364: The World War I Centennial Commission Act

9. HR 6612: To redesignate the Dryden Flight Research Center as the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center and the Western Aeronautical Test Range as the Hugh L. Dryden Aeronautical Test Range

8. HR 4212: The Drywall Safety Act of 2012

7. HR 3197: To name the Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Spokane, Washington as the Mann-Grandstaff Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center

6. S 3193: To make technical corrections to the legal description of certain land to be held in trust for the Barona Band of Mission Indians, and for other purposes

5. HR 2453: Mark Twain Commemorative Coin Act

4. HR 6443: To designate the facility of the Department of Veterans Affairs located at 9800 West Commercial Boulevard in Sunrise, Florida as the William Bill Kling VA Clinic

3. HR 443: An Act to provide for the conveyance of certain property from the United States to the Maniilaq Association located in Kotzebue, Alaska

2. S 925: Mt. Andrea Lawrence Designation Act of 2011

and finally:

1. Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013

The last one sounds less small-beer than the other nine, right? I include it to show that Congress could pass a wide-ranging, controversial bill in pretty short notice, after all.

National Journal's tick-tock of the House GOP's fumble is a solid read, with nice details down to the room numbers where key meetings occured. If you look for them, there are also some clues as to what you can and can't take seriously when members of Congress talk about debt.

Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, appeared at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and took a hard line, announcing that major cuts in entitlement programs were now off the table. Labor unions such as the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union also felt emboldened by the outcome of the election and the political capital they had exerted to help elect the president in swing states like Ohio; in turn, they demanded that the president stick to his campaign promise of raising taxes, while also preserving Medicare and other benefit programs.

That was a highly touted speech, but if you were an optimistic entitlement-cutter, you would have found plenty of clues that Durbin was open to cuts. I'll excerpt:

It is not protection to pretend that Social Security and Medicare can continue forever without any changes.

The truth is Social Security and Medicare have survived this long precisely because we have been willing in the past to make technical adjustments without sacrificing the basic principles or fundamental soundness of these essential programs.

Progressives should be willing to talk about ways to ensure the long-term viability of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but those conversations should not be part of a plan to avert the fiscal cliff.

Putting the discussions off indefinitely makes our choices harder; our success less likely; and negative effects on current beneficiaries a near certainty.

In January 1983 I was a newly elected Congressman representing a Republican district.  My first day on the job I was told:  In six months, Social Security will be broke.

Instead, four months later, Congress passed a series of modest, bipartisan changes that added decades of solvency toSocial Security.  That was 30 years ago.

Labor heard all of this and thought: Phew, Durbin's not going to cut anything. Durbin wasn't merely the Democrats' whip; he was the key progressive on the Bowles-Simpson committee. He could have mentioned a few Bowles-Simpsons ideas worth keeping on the table, and he didn't.

After the vote last night, the Campaign to Fix the Debt released a statement from Bowles and Simpson, jawing about how they were very, very disappointed by the punt. "Washington missed this magic moment to do something big to reduce the deficit, reform our tax code, and fix our entitlement programs," they wrote. "We have all known for over a year that this fiscal cliff was coming. In fact Washington politicians set it up to force themselves to seriously deal with our Nation’s long term fiscal problems."

Indeed. And they've claimed that they're be another "accountability moment" in two months. And we know when to believe them, and when to translate their words as guff.

I've been looking for patterns in the solid "aye" vote for last night's package, which only won over 85 Republicans.* A couple of guideposts:

The retirees (15): Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), Bob Dold (R-Ill.), David Dreier (R-Calif.), Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), Eton Gallegly (R-Calif.), Wally Herger (R-Calif.), Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio) Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.), Tim Johnson (R-Ill.), Dan Lungren (R-Calif.), Don Manzullo (R-Ill.), John Sullivan (R-Okla.), Bob Turner (R-N.Y.). These members either retired, lost primaries, or lost general elections. Only five of them are being replaced by Democrats.

The freshmen (19): Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), Dan Benishek (R-Mich.), Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.), Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), Joe Heck (R-Nev.), Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), Tom Marino (R-Pa.), Tom Meehan (R-Pa.), Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), John Runyan (R-N.J.), Steve Womack (R-Ark.). All were elected in 2010. Some, like Noem and Lance, represent areas that would be hurt if the financial industry panicked. Some, like Benishek and Womack, represent mostly rural districts. No clear pattern here.

The rest (51): Rodney Alexander (R-La.), John Boehner (R-Ohio), Kevin Brady (R-Texas), Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), Kevin Calvert (R-Calif.), Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Howard Coble (R-N.C.), Tom Cole (R-Okla.), Anders Crenshaw (R-Fla.), Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.),Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.), Peter King (R-N.Y.), Jon Kline (R-Minn.), Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), Bob Latta (R-Ohio), Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), Frank Lucas (R-Okla), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo), Buck McKeon (R-Ca), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Candice Miller (R-Mich.), Gary Miller (R-Calif.), Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), Todd Platts (R-Pa.), Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Calif.), Ed Royce (R-Calif.), Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Aaron Schock (R-Ill.), Bud Schuster (R-Pa.), John Shimkus (R-Ill.), Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), Mac Thornberry (R-Ga.), Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio), Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Bill Young (R-Fla.), Don Young (R-Alaska). It's a mixture of people looking ahead (Gerlach and Shock have ambitions to run statewide), people who run committees, and people who are, generally, to the left of the conference.

So what do we have here? Do we have a rump of Republicans who might vote for compromise bills? That's not clear. Do we have a rump that can be convinced to break the tax "pledge" and vote for revenue? We do, but keep in mind how sui generis this situation was. As of midnight yesterday, Republicans were voting to cut most tax rates from the new, post-Bush baseline. And only 68 members who'll be in the new Congress went along with that. In a few months, when they get the debt limit package and the budget, that's not nearly enough Republicans to make a deal with Senate Democrats.

UPDATE: John Stanton highlights a quote from Marco Rubio that makes the point:

Among the few senators who opposed the deal, Sen. Marco Rubio nevertheless defended those in his party who had voted for the tax hike.

"Taxes went up today automatically, so Republicans didn't vote to raise taxes," Rubio said.

Correction, Jan. 2, 2013: This post originally misstated the number of Republican votes for the fiscal cliff tax deal. It was 85, not 81.

Count me among the people surprised that the House recessed yesterday without doing anything on potential funding for Hurricane Sandy relief. In the building, the punt came as a surprise in two ways. One: Those not from the Northeast had developed fiscal cliff tunnel vision, and gone days without mentioning the relief package. Two: Members expected to file out of the House and go home stuck around, engaging in high-class histrionics about the failure to move on the bill.

It was a classic Republican foul-up. Their reasons for opposing a broad Sandy relief package are twofold: They want to see it offset by cuts to less necessary spending, and they don't want any other aid to creep into it. That's a danger, always, with emergency legislation -- it becomes a Christmas tree for legislators (in Alaska, in this case) who believe their states were shortchanged in previous disaster packages. Republicans wanted to pass the $9.7 billion package for the National Flood Insurance Program, then take a green eyeshade look at what other aid was needed. And instead they just kind of forgot about it.

If this does anything for Republicans, I guess that distracting Democrats this way prevents them from spending time discussing the role of climate change in natural disasters, which we've all sort of forgotten about since November.