Collapse of the House Republican majority.

Collapse of the House Republican majority.: It's in the conjunction of these two failures that you see a mortal threat to the practical existence of the Republican governing majority in the House. That's because if you can't find 218 Republicans out of 234 to vote for a bill, the other option is to start with 201 Democrats and try to add two dozen Republicans. And in many ways, that kind of coalition makes more sense given that to become law a bill also needs to pass a majority-Democratic Senate and be signed into law by a Democratic president. A "Pelosi Plus" House bill, in other words, can actually become law whereas a Boehner Majority House bill is at best a bargaining ploy. Now normally that kind of legislation simply can't move in the House. The party that holds the majority forms a cartel and blocks bills from coming to the floor that don't have support in the majority caucus. Boehner has allowed select violations of this so-called Hastert Rule (though in practice the rule predates Hastert) but there's at least a chance that he'll be forced to suspend it wholesale throughout the appropriations process.