After House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told ABC News Thursday that Obamacare was now the “law of the land” and Republicans should compromise with Democrats to pass comprehensive immigration reform, conservatives can expect the House Republican Study Committee (RSC) — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) — to fight for more influence over the Republican party.
Brian Straessle, Communications Director of the House RSC, told Breitbart News that the RSC will “continue to be the conservative backbone in Congress,” and the “conservative movement was absolutely not defeated in this election.”
“We’ll only lose going forward if we defeat ourselves,” Straessle asserted.
He noted that, if anything, the election of new members “has made the incoming House Republican majority even more conservative than the current one.”
After the Tea Party built the GOP’s House majority in the 2010 midterm elections, enabling Boehner to become Speaker and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) to become Majority Leader, conservatives in the House elected Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) to lead the RSC, which has a majority of the Republican House members.
Boehner and Cantor have never had the trust of the Tea Party because of their establishment sensibilities, but Jordan — and the RSC — has often carried the conservative banner in the House, remembering that conservative Tea Partiers built their majority.
For instance, Jordan’s RSC presented a budget proposal that would balance the budget by 2020 and more aggressively tackled entitlements than even Paul Ryan’s famed budget. They did not relent during the debt ceiling negotiations.
After President Barack Obama won reelection, Jordan said that “America faces big challenges and deserves leaders willing to meet them head on,” and that is why “conservatives in the House spent the last several years working to encourage free enterprise, reduce spending, prevent tax increases, revamp Medicare and Social Security, fix a broken welfare system, expand American energy production, balance the budget, and get the government less involved in people’s lives.”
“Today, our work continues,” Jordan concluded.