Is the Republican Party Finally Turning on Its Far-Right Fringe?

At the beginning of last week, the path forward for New Hampshire's new GOP-led House of Representatives seemed clear. The party caucus had chosen conservative William O'Brien as the state's new House Speaker, and, despite some internal disagreements, Republicans had rallied around the choice. "I don't think there will be lack of unity at all," New Hampshire-based Republican consultant Dave Carney told me before the vote.

And then, all hell broke loose. A session that was supposed to allow House members to formally ratify O'Brien before breaking for lunch dragged on into the evening, after O'Brien failed to secure a majority of the vote, Finally, after more than seven hours, Shawn Jasper, an 11-term Republican representative who only recently began making noise about running for speaker, was elected by a coalition of Democrats and anti-O'Brien Republicans. The vote ended up 195 to 178, with less than half of the Republican members voting for Jasper. (With 400 members, plus 24 state senators, New Hampshire, quite randomly, has the largest state legislature in the country.)

Conservative Republicans were furious. "I think the new speaker sold his soul to the Democrats because of a power position," said Al Baldasaro, co-chair of the conservative New Hampshire House Republican Alliance. "It's a disgrace. He's a disgrace to the Republican Party."

The state GOP said it would not offer Jasper a seat on its Executive Committee, citing bylaws that offer the position only to a speaker chosen by a majority of the Republican caucus. In an email to executive committee members, state party chair Jennifer Horn said that the party would discuss possible resolutions in response to the House Speaker election, to "make it clear to our grassroots activists that the State Committee does not condone what happened on Wednesday."

While the internecine spat may seem like a quirk of local politics—and, in many ways, it is—it also underscores deeper divides in the Republican Party, both nationally and in several states. Moderate Republicans are growing increasingly vocal in their criticism of the party's Tea Party wing, concerned that the party's far-right wing is excessively obstructionist and could hurt the party's chances in the 2016 general election. The divide is also partly a matter of style—some politicians would rather appear like hard-working border collies, while others prefer the angry pit bull look. In New Hampshire, the same dynamic is playing out on a smaller scale, with O'Brien playing the role of pit bull.

To understand why O'Brien became the center of the divide in the New Hampshire GOP, it helps to go back to 2011 and 2012, when he previously served as House Speaker. During that period, his record included, among other things, pushing to restrict voting by college students because they are "foolish" and tend to hold liberal positions; harassing a fellow Republican representative for opposing budget cuts to the point that members introduced legislation to ban bullying within the legislature; and barring a major state newspaper from a press conference after the paper ran a cartoon depicting O'Brien as Hitler. Under his leadership, the House also significantly reduced state spending, passing massive cuts to the state college system, hospitals, and social services.

O'Brien's rough leadership style was largely blamed for GOP losses in 2012, when New Hampshire voters kicked many of the Republicans out of the House and elected a majority-Democrat chamber that went on to reverse many of the previous session's actions. When Republicans took back control this year, O'Brien initially pledged to be more cooperative, but began the session last Wednesday by pushing for a change in rules that would have made it much harder for anyone else to win the Speaker election.

"Bill O'Brien was a lightening rod in his last term as speaker, but I think he was also feared because he was a man that could get things done that needed to be done in the state of New Hampshire," said conservative Republican state Rep. Leon Rideout.

But the move seems to have been the last straw for many Republicans, who ended up voting for Jasper. Like his national counterparts, Jasper's policies are still very conservative, and he has gotten endorsements and high marks from a range of right-wing groups. (One exception is gun rights groups, which don't rate him particularly highly.) The biggest difference between the two is in style.

"I think he's a pragmatist, but I don't think his ideology is hugely different," said Tom Rath, a longtime New Hampshire political consultant. He added that Jasper is unlikely to be overly solicitous to Democrats, because the opposition didn't extract promises in exchange for their votes. "This thing was much more spontaneous combustion," Rath said.

Kathy Sullivan, former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, agreed. She said the danger for the Republicans is not that Democrats will gain positions of power in the new House—Jasper has pledged to assign Republican chairs to all committees—but that the majority party simply won't be able to present a united front.

"It kind of reminds me of what you see in Washington with divisions you see in the party," she said, "Republicans kind of scrambling to keep the Tea Party from shutting down the government, keep them from impeaching, doing crazy things that will only hurt the Republican Party."

If conservatives try to go around the new Republican leadership, said New Hampshire political analyst Dean Spiliotes, it would give the Democrats a clear target as state and national elections approach in 2016. O'Brien was known for tying his legislative goals to national efforts by Tea Party groups, something that might reflect poorly on the entire party in moderate voters' eyes.

"I think you have the same type of concerns among established Republicans nationally about the right wing of the Republican, whether we're talking about Ted Cruz or somebody else," Spiliotes said.

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