J. Scott Applewhite - AP
House Speaker John Boehner, left, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor are focusing the legislative agenda on jobs and small tax cuts. Controversial matters will wait.
WASHINGTON -- Unpopular and divided, the once mighty House Republicans are laboring to repair their image and frame a new agenda.
Absent for now is a big, contentious docket similar to last year's, which included the goal of writing new health care legislation to replace the Obama administration's law. A long-promised overhaul of the tax code seems out of reach. When Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., issued a memo last week laying out the body's initial legislative agenda, a centerpiece was a modest tax cut for small businesses.
With their poll numbers sinking and President Barack Obama attacking them - and in a speech last week poking fun at the infighting among their leaders - House Republicans long to establish a reputation as the party of job creation and to blunt the notion that they are recalcitrant and combative.
Senior Republicans are eager to minimize the drama, letting the party's presidential candidate, when he is finally chosen, take the lead.
"Most of us expect the major decisions aren't going to be made this year," said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a former chairman of the House Republican campaign committee. "It's a very political year. The big thing for us is to not be part of the conversation instead of trying to inject ourselves into it."
Party pulled both ways
But attracting positive attention while avoiding confrontation is proving to be a challenge in an election year, particularly for a group that in 2011 seemed to relish showdown after showdown.
Members are struggling to sing from the same legislative hymnal. Many want to do bigger things, like a tax code overhaul and changes to Medicare. Others, including Cantor, knowing they will get no help from Senate Democrats, seem to favor incremental steps.
Many of the more conservative members, particularly some freshmen, want to continue taking the good fight to Democrats.
"We should focus on standing for principle and put the politics aside," said Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, who is in a Republican primary fight for a seat in the Senate. "You have to keep doing what you think is the right thing to do."
Others desperately want to find bipartisan compromises that can become law.
Outside pressures from each end of the political spectrum, which have dogged the House all year, are myriad: a five-year transportation bill, a major priority of Speaker John Boehner, is being attacked by the left for including new oil drilling as a way to pay for the bill, and the right - Heritage Action for America, a conservative group, is urging Republicans to reject new highway spending.
Further, a tangle in December over extending the payroll tax cut pit House Republicans against Senate Republicans, who argue that their House colleagues need to settle down and find a uniform message with them.
Bipartisan renewal
Defense is not a position that House Republicans of the 112th Congress are accustomed to playing. The group had leverage last year, setting the agenda on spending - reining it in beyond what even Boehner would have dreamed - and beating back Democrats on a variety of policy areas in the process.
But the public audience was not always wowed by their accomplishments. Polls showed that many Americans, even those who agreed with the Republican fiscal agenda, found the process, which included nearly shutting down the government, too messy. And among hard-core conservatives, the Republican gains were often too slight to win them applause.
At their retreat in January, Republicans tried to get back on the same page. They are now trying hard to demonstrate where they agree with Democrats, like in the area of small business, while still hammering away at Obama on unemployment and energy.
Should the Supreme Court find fault with some or all of the health care law, Republicans will be ready with a replacement, they say.
House and Senate negotiators are locked in talks to extend the payroll tax cut through the rest of the year, as well as to extend unemployment compensation and stop a deep cut in payments to doctors treating Medicare patients.
