Home for the holidays on the Hill: 'Fighting' in the House Republican 'family'

By Fox News · Fox News

Many families fight around Christmastime. House Republicans are no exception. You’ve been at the dinner table about to enjoy a slab of pumpkin pie when uncle-somebody or cousin-someone enters the dining room on a bender, thanks to Santa dropping a little too much bourbon in their Christmas stocking. You know what happens next. "Fighting" inside the House Republican "family" didn’t go like that this year. But some Republicans are frustrated with how things have gone lately. There is particular frustration with the party’s efforts to address healthcare. But also about whether House Republicans "wasted" their majority when House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., recessed the body for nearly two months during the government shutdown. THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO WHERE WE STAND WITH A HEALTHCARE PACKAGE: CHRISTMAS OR GROUNDHOG DAY? Here's the latest intrafamily fight: The decision by four House Republicans to bolt from their party and align with Democrats in their effort to renew expiring Obamacare subsidies for three years. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., are all centrist GOPers representing battleground districts. The quartet hoped the House Rules Committee would make in order one of four plans they supported to temporarily renew expiring Obamacare credits. But the panel blocked them from offering their legislation on the House floor. "I tried very hard over the last several weeks and even through the weekend and as late as yesterday trying to engineer a way for them to have a vote on the floor so they could show that priority," said Johnson. "But it was not to be." The term you’ll hear a lot over the coming weeks is "discharge petition." Discharge petitions are a parliamentary artifice for lawmakers to go around the Speaker and deposit their bill on the floor — if the leadership won’t do it for them. The gambit was rarely successful for two decades. But there have been multiple successful discharge petitio…