Mending intra-party fences

I saw a headline in Roll Call this morning that read, “GOP Leaders Reaching Out.” Immediately, I assumed the article was about Republicans trying to strike a deal with Joe Lieberman on Social Security, or asking Ben Nelson to endorse a ban on gay marriage.

But I was missing the point entirely. The Republican leaders aren’t reaching out to Dems; they’re reaching out to each other.

Hoping to improve their often strained cross-chamber relations, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) attended the Senate Republican luncheon Tuesday in the debut of an expected weekly exchange of GOP leaders.

DeLay’s visit was part of a broader effort to strengthen bonds and coordination between House and Senate GOP leaders, a campaign that continued Tuesday night when the top six Republican leaders from each chamber sat down for a private dinner in Speaker Dennis Hastert’s (Ill.) suite of offices.

Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is also scheduling his first trek across the Capitol to meet with the roughly 40-member team of deputies to House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). The McConnell meeting with Blunt’s Whip team was originally slated for Tuesday but was postponed because of Senate votes and will likely occur next week, aides said.

Emerging from the nearly 90-minute weekly luncheon, DeLay said the favor would be returned in kind by a Senate leader, possibly Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), at today’s House Republican Conference meeting. Calling it “an exchange of leaders back and forth,” DeLay said he even got to brief the Senators about the House’s upcoming agenda.

Jeez, I thought only Dems needed this kind of help.

I mean, we’re talking about congressional Republicans in the Bush era — a gang that values loyalty, ideological consistency, and message discipline above everything. And yet, inter-chamber and intra-party squabbles have intensified to the point in which these “outreach” efforts have become necessary.

Part of the GOP problem seems to stem from too many Republicans believing that they’re running the show, and each believing the other is being unhelpful.

Improving relations between GOP leaders in the two chambers has been a long-running effort, particularly over the past two years. During the 2003 budget negotiations, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) inflamed tensions with House leaders when he cut a side deal with GOP Senators on reducing the size of Bush’s tax cut but failed to inform DeLay or Hastert before the news leaked out.

Frist was forced to publicly apologize repeatedly to House GOP leaders. Later that year other steps were taken to smooth over the relations between the two sides, including a private dinner similar to last night’s event, the first taking place in the home of GOP lawyer-activist C. Boyden Gray’s sister-in-law.

It seems House-Senate tensions reached a problematic level more recently when congressional Republicans gathered for a discussion-driven retreat in West Virginia in early February, led by Hastert and DeLay, but Frist didn’t show up — preferring to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

That said, in this uniter-not-divider era, it’s nice to see that far-right conservative Republicans who control the entire federal government and agree on virtually every area of public policy, can smooth over their differences and improve their communication. It’s touching, isn’t it?