The House of Representatives may be under Republican control, but it lacks any semblance of principled leadership. In fact, fiscally conservative and libertarian-leaning members -- the ideas wing of the GOP -- have faced an increasingly hostile environment under Republican leadership, one in which they're treated as obstacles rather than allies to advance the limited government policies that Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and his team purportedly believe.

Why is FreedomWorks backing Representative Raúl Labrador in his decision to challenge Rep. Kevin McCarthy and run for House Majority Leader?

Democracy and Power 110: Majority Leader of the Senate and the Speaker of the HouseThe first vote in a legislative session is the most important. The Senate and the House of Representatives vote for their respective leaders. The leadership positions are consistently decided by which party has the majority.

Democracy and Power 113: Vote Trading“I’ll vote for your legislation, if you’ll vote for mine.”

Will House Speaker John Boehner need to rely on more Democrats than Republicans in order to pass President Obama’s agenda through Congress – violating what is known as the Hastert Rule? It would be the sixth occasion since he assumed the speakership in 2011, and his seventh attempt. If a cancelled attempt to pass Obamacare funding on Tuesday is included, it would be the eighth.

Senators John McCain and Tom Harkin kvetched on Friday that the Senate had become too partisan; Sen. Harkin warned in hushed tones that it was “very dangerous… every bit as dangerous as the break-up of the Union before the Civil War.” Presumably they were talking about conservatives who oppose ObamaCare.

With Sen. Ted Cruz fighting Obamacare this week “until he can’t stand,” it is a timely occasion to remember which Republicans have been working with Democrats to knock Sen. Cruz down. Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) The second-term former MTV star complained on Friday that he and his friends in the House had “kept a lid on our anger” at Sen. Cruz, explaining, “we were the punching bag and bullied by some of these Senate conservatives.”