The dozen rebels targeted by GOP leaders

To keep conservative rebels in check, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his allies have been doling out punishments at an aggressive clip in the 114th Congress.

From kicking unruly members off the Rules Committee and GOP whip team to stripping a lawmaker of his subcommittee gavel, leadership has been growing more comfortable with taking retaliatory measures to try to enforce party discipline.

{mosads}But several Tea Party targets haven’t gone quietly. They’ve been fighting back with help from Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan’s conservative House Freedom Caucus, which successfully pressured leaders this week to return a subcommittee gavel to one of their members.

GOP leaders are now in a holding pattern as they figure out whether any other rebels should be punished. Here’s a short history of the dozen defectors who’ve experienced Boehner’s wrath — so far — this Congress:

Boehner boots two from Rules Committee

Boehner’s first act of retribution arrived on the opening day of the new Congress. Within hours of voting against Boehner for Speaker, Florida Republican Reps. Daniel Webster and Rich Nugent were unceremoniously dumped from the House Rules Committee. Boehner directly appoints majority-party members to the panel, known as the “Speaker’s committee,” which acts as an arm of leadership in determining how legislation is considered on the House floor. Selected members are expected to demonstrate their loyalty.

Outcome: Webster’s first-quarter fundraising totals shot up after many conservatives embraced his last-minute run for Speaker. But GOP aides expect his fundraising to falter over the long term since leadership-affiliated groups won’t be helping him out as they did in the past. Webster and Nugent’s seats sat empty for three months until Boehner appointed Reps. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.) and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) to replace them. 

Revoked travel privileges

House GOP leadership aides say that taxpayer-funded travel is “a privilege and not a right.” At least three conservatives who frequently oppose leadership — Reps. Steve King (Iowa), Ted Yoho (Fla.) and Louie Gohmert (Texas) — learned the lesson the hard way. The Speaker’s office informed King of his revoked funds just a few hours before his flight was set to depart for a congressional delegation to Egypt. Yoho, one of the three long-shot Republicans to challenge Boehner for Speaker, was removed from a spring congressional delegation to attend the Summit of the Americas in Panama. And Gohmert was removed from scheduled trips to Egypt and Africa earlier this year.

Outcome: King ultimately went on the trip to Egypt anyway with his own money and “literally reached into my kids’ inheritance.” Yoho kept quiet about the revoked travel privileges until this week when he felt compelled to speak out in the aftermath of recent retribution for voting against a procedural motion for the trade package this month. Gohmert remained defiant: “As a result of [Boehner] canceling my trip this weekend, I get to be on Fox News,” he declared on the House floor in March. Still, it’s a lot harder for these lawmakers to join colleagues for expensive foreign trips when it’s on their own dime. 

Three purged from whip team

After 34 conservatives revolted against leadership and tried to kill a major trade package this month, Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) quickly purged offenders from his vote-counting team. Three Freedom Caucus members — Reps. Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.), Trent Franks (Ariz.) and Steve Pearce (N.M.) — were booted from the team, marking the first wave of retaliation against lawmakers who voted to block the trade bills over objections to the “convoluted” way they would be structured on the floor.

Outcome: For the most part, the conservative trio accepted Scalise’s decision, since longstanding whip-team rules dictate that members must stick with leadership on procedural rules votes. Some of the intraparty divisions can be attributed to the fact that the 246-member GOP conference is the largest it’s been in generations, Lummis said. “I was really sad. I don’t want to see these things escalate,” she told The Hill. “Republicans occasionally like to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Meadows stripped of committee gavel

Perhaps no act of retribution sparked more conservative outrage than when House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) ousted Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) as a subcommittee chairman for voting against the same trade rule and failing to pay party dues. Though mild-mannered and well-liked by his colleagues, Meadows already had been on thin ice for voting against Boehner for Speaker and co-founding the Freedom Caucus. In a meeting in Meadows’ office, Chaffetz said he had consulted with GOP leaders and the Steering Committee but that the decision was entirely his own.

Outcome: On Thursday, just a week later, Chaffetz abruptly reversed course and reinstated Meadows as chairman of Oversight’s subcommittee on government operations — even though Boehner had publicly endorsed Chaffetz’s punishment against Meadows a day earlier. Conservative media personalities had spent the week ripping Chaffetz; Redstate’s Erick Erickson dissed him as a “lapdog of leadership.” But it was a GOP conference rule that ultimately forced Chaffetz to revoke the punishment. To appoint Meadows’ successor as subcommittee chairman, Chaffetz needed backing from a majority of his committee members. The problem: The full panel was stacked with Freedom Caucus members and their sympathizers, who wanted Meadows reinstated and threatened to scuttle any new pick.

Plot to sack freshman class president

Rep. Ken Buck had seen what was happening to other Freedom Caucus members who joined him in voting against the trade rule. Late Tuesday, the Colorado Republican became the target. A freshman colleague, Rep. Cresent Hardy (R-Nev.), approached him with an ultimatum: Resign as GOP freshman class president, or we will vote you out. Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.), the freshman liaison to leadership, and other Boehner allies hastily scheduled a meeting for the next day to overthrow Buck. But he refused to step down; instead, Buck took to Twitter and issued a defiant message: “Bring it on.”  

Outcome: Buck survived the coup attempt, though he emerged from the meeting in the Capitol bruised and battered. His fellow freshmen complained he was an ineffective leader, saying he hadn’t organized enough freshman gatherings or communicated to the group. But Buck has organized a variety of events including a bipartisan freshman lunch with former Obama administration official and current Uber executive David Plouffe, a reception with wine and spirits wholesalers, and an upcoming trip to Langley, Va. His vote to undermine leadership also was a source of frustration, one freshman lawmaker in the room said. Buck’s political foes said they had enough votes to remove him, but they backed off after his allies begged to give him another chance to make things right.

Bills blocked from floor votes

Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), an 11-term libertarian who frequently bucks his party, has been the target of punishment before: GOP leaders removed him from the powerful House Financial Services Committee in 2012. Reps. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.), David Schweikert (Ariz.) and Justin Amash (Mich.) were also kicked off the Budget, Agriculture and Financial Services Committees at the time. But Jones claims leadership has reached a new level of pettiness in preventing a vote on his bill to rename a federal courthouse in his district after Randy Doub, a judge who passed away earlier this year.

“You can despise the individual, but for God’s sakes, this actually is hurtful to the family,” Jones told The Hill.

A House GOP leadership aide denied that Jones’s bill was intentionally held up.

During the first week of the new Congress in January, Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) was originally slated to be the sponsor of a noncontroversial bill that establishes an Energy Department research program on low-dose radiation. But he claimed leadership changed the author to Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) after Weber pledged to oppose Boehner’s reelection as Speaker.

Outcome: The courthouse renaming bill has stalled after the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee sent it to the floor in May. Jones said he’s discussed potentially changing the chief sponsor of the bill to Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) instead so that it can move forward. “I’ve been told that any bill that I have of consequence, that if my name’s on it, it’s probably not going to get moving,” Jones said.