“It’s a little bit like being the head caretaker of the cemetery. There are a lot of people under you, but nobody listens.” — Rep. Hal Rodgers (R-KY), quoted by the New York Times, describing House Speaker John Boehner’s leadership.
John Judis notes “there is a regional division in the party between the deep South, which contains many of the diehard House Republicans, and the Republicans from the Northeast, industrial Midwest, and the Far West. In the House vote on the fiscal cliff, Republican House members from the deep South opposed it by 83 to 10, while Republicans from the Northeast favored it by 24 to one, and those from the Far West by 17 to eight.”