When it comes to unruly conservatives in Congress, House GOP leaders know they can’t control them — they can only hope to contain them.
This explains why party leaders are proceeding with extreme caution as they figure out how to respond to President Obama’s unilateral actions that would shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Top Republicans learned painful lessons from last year’s 16-day government shutdown and this summer’s messy, intraparty battle over how to respond to a surge of young immigrants from Central America — and they don’t want to repeat past mistakes.
How Republicans respond to the latest political crisis represents the first, big test for the party since it captured control of the Senate and boosted its House majority in this month’s midterm elections.