Faced with dismal election results, rank-and-file House Republicans will spend the next day and a half deciding whether to challenge their entire leadership team, target individual leaders or abandon any effort to defeat them later this month.
"The only people who are concerned are the ones who want to keep the House in the year 2000," Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., a key House conservative, said today. Souder said an effort may be made to put together a ticket to challenge the entire leadership team. If that does not work, conservatives may mount "symbolic" challenges to individual leaders.
"It's very late to do this, but the level of dissatisfaction is high," he said, adding there is a "strong possibility" House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., lacks the votes to be re-elected speaker.
Sources said one of several tickets being discussed has Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., running for speaker; Rep. Steve Largent, R-Okla., for majority leader; current Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, remaining in his job; and GOP Conference Vice Chairwoman Jennifer Dunn of Washington opposing Conference Chairman John Boehner of Ohio.
"The next 36 hours is going to tell the tale," an aide to a House Republican conservative said today.
Another GOP aide said, "There is dissatisfaction in the ranks and somebody has to take the fall, and the popular gossip up here is that it's going to take more than one head."
While much of the impetus for a challenge is coming from sophomore conservatives, more senior members also are angry, sources said. "There are other members who remember what it was like to be in the minority and it wasn't much fun," said an aide to a conservative.
A source within the GOP moderate camp said that, based on Tuesday's election results, moderates are "positioned to get one of their own into the leadership." The House GOP leadership is expected to hold a closed-door retreat later this week or next week in advance of House leadership elections.
With the situation on the Hill fluid, a number of scenarios for shaking up the House GOP leadership were being floated, including developing a leadership ticket of conservative and moderate House Republicans to challenge the entire team. One source suggested that Gingrich could hold on as speaker, but be forced to purge his leadership team and put together a coalition leadership representing the various factions within the Conference.
Some members are furious their leaders did not see Tuesday's results coming. One source said that, as late as Tuesday, Gingrich said the worst-case scenario was the GOP would pick up six seats. And National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman John Linder of Georgia said he expected the GOP to gain 15 seats.
Today Gingrich conceded House GOP leaders "may not be doing everything right, and we may have a lot of things to look at. ... But I would suggest it's pretty hard to argue that the only team to have been successful in 70 years [in three times electing a Republican majority] somehow ought to be replaced."