Early afternoon on April 16, a small bloc of GOP House moderates broke ranks andvoted to pass legislationprotecting Haitian refugees. About 12 hours later, a small bloc of far-right Republicans broke ranksto sabotage a procedural voteon an intelligence surveillance bill.

Neither of those things is supposed to happen, not when lawmakers are observing the unwritten rules of the congressional road.

The moderates defied Republican leaders on a discharge petition, a procedural move to go around the usually all-powerful speaker of the House. And the staunch conservatives bucked party leadership on a rules vote that is normally a perfunctory party-unity measure that sets up debate on the actual legislation.

Over 28 years, from 1995 till early 2023, only eight rules votes got rejected, including 20 straight years without one failing, according to research byTom Wickham, a senior congressional expertat the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And over that same time frame, only three discharge petitions got the requisite 218 signatures to overcome the majority’s leadership objections.

In the last three years, House leaders have lost the rules vote 11 times and seven discharge petitions hit the magic number to overcome opposition from House Speaker Mike Johnson.

“There are no rules anymore,” said Rep. Ryan Zinke, a veteran Republican who is retiring at the end of this term.

Zinke, who first won election in 2014, wasn’t talking about official rules of Congress, but instead the disappearing norms of the institution.

These are the long-held traditions that help assure that the House and Senate can ultimately produce legislation.

“The rules Congress adopts for itself cannot force effective processes. Rather, constructive norms are required to set boundaries around excesses,” Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican who served 36 years in the House and Senate, wrote in“The Folkways of Congress,” a new book about the importance of these unwritten rules.

In the House, even before new lawmakers get sworn in, senior lawmakers and aides explain such norms: In the first vote of the new Congress, vote for their party’s leader to be the House speaker; always vote for the rule because it’s considered just parliamentary and sets up actual legislative debate; if you tell leadership you’re a yes on the “whip check,” you aren’t allowed to change your mind and vote no. If you are going to vote against your party’s legislation, speak directly to the committee chair advancing the bill to explain it in person.

Source: Drudge Report