Bailout: Their defining moment

By Lisa Mascaro

Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Nevada’s two Republican representatives, Jon Porter and Dean Heller, watched from the House floor Monday as the electronic voting board lighted up, recording the outcome of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

They craned their necks, looking high above the gallery seats to the wall where the votes register the moment they are cast. The two Nevadans stood side by side in that historic moment, but they were not on the same team.

Porter had voted yes. Heller had voted no. The philosophical fault line that has been widening between the two Republicans throughout this Congress has become more noticeable with the bailout issue, which is to come back before the House today.

Facing a tough reelection fight in a now-Democratic district, Porter has continued his shift toward the political center.

Heller, whose district still enjoys a large, if shrinking, Republican majority, cemented his spot among the party’s conservatives.

As the House takes up the bailout legislation anew, the differences between Porter and Heller reflect a growing divide among House Republicans, a once mighty group that is now in a defining internal struggle for direction that reflects the greater challenges facing the party nationwide.

Porter’s shift to the center usually puts him on the winning side in a Congress now ruled by Democrats. After being tagged in 2006 for being in lock step with President Bush and the Republican Congress, Porter has consistently cast votes against party leadership.

For example: He supported an expanded children’s health program, voting against Bush’s veto. He backed an enhanced GI Bill for Iraq vets — one of just 32 Republicans to vote for it initially. Last week, he joined Democrats to support using oil company revenues to pay for renewable energy tax credits.

On a February afternoon, Porter’s Republican colleagues staged a dramatic walkout to protest a debate over contempt citations against White House officials. Porter declined to join them.

As the $700 billion bailout bill began taking shape, a core group of House Republicans refused to come onboard.

To them, the bill is at odds with their small-government, fiscally conservative philosophy, even if for most of the Bush years, Republicans vastly expanded both government and the national debt.

The party’s conservative flank is now ascendant. Since the party’s steep electoral losses in 2006, fiscal conservatives have asserted themselves in a push for dominance as the party searches for a new image, a new brand.

The party’s leaders usually align themselves with the conservatives — they are conservatives too. Bush, who calls himself “a free-market guy,” is usually on their side.

But the bailout is different.

It started as a Bush administration proposal. Leaders of both parties negotiated changes and backed the final product, eager to deliver a bipartisan vote. Republican presidential candidate John McCain blessed it with his support.

This time, as Porter voted yes, he wasn’t bucking the leadership. The leadership was at the political center.

Porter was bucking the restive conservatives who are the core — and future — of his party.

And he lost.

Heller has surprised many who know him — or thought they knew him — since coming to Congress last year as a freshman. He’s been more conservative than expected.

Many attribute his rightward shift to his brutal primary election. Heller narrowly won in 2006 over a more fiscally conservative challenger backed by a national organization with deep pockets.

Heller will tell you he’s always been a fiscal conservative. Shortly after his election, he said Republicans needed to learn from their electoral losses and return to the small-government philosophy of Ronald Reagan.

Heller explains that as Nevada’s secretary of state for 10 years before coming to Congress, his responsibilities as a constitutional officer forced him to hew to the center.

Since arriving in Washington, he’s burnished his conservative credentials.

He twice opposed the bill to expand children’s health care by taxing cigarettes. He voted against the GI Bill until the millionaires’ tax to pay for it was eliminated and other changes were made.

As gas prices skyrocketed, he dramatically introduced a resolution on the floor essentially chiding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to unveil her promised gas price reduction plan.

But Heller has also joined Porter to buck his party on key votes. This summer, for example, he voted for mortgage relief and ultimately agreed to an extension of unemployment benefits — even as the Republican leadership criticized the bills.

As the bailout vote neared on Monday, Heller weighed whether government should even be interfering in the marketplace as Bush and his party leadership proposed.

No surprise that he joined the House conservatives in Monday’s vote.

What was shocking was who stood alongside him — not just a minority of restless House conservatives. Breakaway moderate Republicans in tough reelection campaigns also joined.

And there were progressive Democrats, including Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley, who rejected the bill for ideologically different reasons.

The unlikely coalition won.

Porter and Heller appeared to marvel over the outcome Monday. They watched the wall, and talked. And then they went their separate ways.