Word: rayburn
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...have no one to raise a fuss over my neckties and my haircuts, my shoes and my clothes generally." He still had plenty of friends left in Washington; it's just that he was finding, as every President finds, that many of them lose their minds. House Speaker Sam Rayburn warned him about it: "Sycophants will stand in the rain a week to see you and will treat you like a king," he said. "They'll come sliding in and tell you you're the greatest man alive - but you know and I know...
...Members in tight races don't think a lot about statesmanship; they think about survival. Even if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House minority leader John Boehner wanted to unite their caucuses behind a bill they thought the country needed, they don't have the power of a Sam Rayburn or a Tom DeLay to ramrod their members into line. In fact, with dozens of Republicans facing stiffer-than-normal challenges this year and House Democrats enjoying a $40 million financial advantage, Boehner publicly refused to stiff-arm his backbenchers, and two-thirds of his caucus voted against the bill...
...news for Hillary is that the middle-class working people who were the heart of the party in the days of Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson have gone to the Republicans," says Paul Begala, a Texas Democrat who helped Bill Clinton reach the White House in 1992. "We still have the latte drinkers, but the cuppa-joe drinkers are mostly gone, and the Democrats have to find a way to bring them back...
...Congress," and he quietly answers, "It's very useful.") With luck, the seeds bear fruit when the votes are finally counted. The process is so slow and cumulative that few people ever become masters. "I've been doing it for years, and I learned from the best," Dingell said, "Rayburn, John McCormack [Rayburn's successor as Speaker...
...protégé of Rayburn's would ever willingly give up jurisdiction over a lunch menu--let alone the biggest bill in decades. Dingell flexed the muscle of a half-century and rallied his fellow committee chairs against this infringement of prerogatives. The select committee was promptly neutered. "John is the quintessential congressional chairman, protecting his jurisdiction while often reaching to grab someone else's," according to Leon Panetta, who chaired the Budget Committee before serving as White House chief of staff. "The last thing he wants is to lose jurisdiction...