Just once:

I would like to see some brave soul, who doesn’t care about re-election or personal standing with the Important Peoples, stand up and say:

“The Speaker’s people told me if I don’t go along, I’m dead meat. So what. The people gave us a mandate, and our so-called leadership is dropping the ball. And they’re threatening my political career if I don’t go along. So, OK. If the rest of the caucus had any guts, they’d toss out the cowardly ninnies in charge.”

Talk about a firestorm! It would shake things up. The there-are-n0-words-bad-enough-to-describe-them scumbags in charge of the GOP are thumbing their noses–as usual–at the people who elected them while getting into bed with Democrats. ENOUGH, DAMMIT!

From another perspective: it’s just a job.

Move to DC, get a job with the establishment GOP.
Married, babies, take on a mortgage and bills.
Attend church regularly, practicing the ideals of the faith as far as one can humanly do so.

To get more experience, work on the Hill as a staffer. Rotate to lobbyist, and then back to the RNC. After 10 years of this lifestyle, these folks are thoroughly, 110% invested in maintaining that which maintains them.

If that were you, would you do anything to jeopardize that?

These minions are not John Paul Jones, or US Grant. They are very well paid, very anonymous people who keep track on whether Amtrak runs on time.

A step toward changing the GOP, is to first change its employment model, then its business communications model. Downsize, flatten the hierarchy, and always always always go for innovation and perspiration, not the date of expiration on one’s wedge of brie.

Boehner et al would do well to heed Da Tech Guys warning and Riehl does indeed nail it.
I never expected the eighty something new comers to save the Republic in this congress I just expected them to fight as if they thought they could. It might be interesting to do a word search for how many times the word fear is used for Fridays capitulation.
DaveO’s description of the GOP reps in general is correct but not necessarily true of the freshman. While I don’t know much about most of the newcomers I think Renee Ellmers (NC2) may be fairly typical. She was/is a Nurse who taught Sunday school. She won in a three way primary beating two men one of who’s emphasis on closing foreign bases sounded rather libertarian tho He never said as much. I supported a man named Dietrich because he promised me personally that he’d fight to close the Dept of Education and at a small forum Renee said something about friends across the isle.
After she won the nomination I accepted the reality that the reasonable sounding Nurse had a much better chance of beating Bob than my bomb thrower. Fact is if it weren’t for UTube Bob Etheridge would still be my congressman.
When these new comers sound just like the same old same old as they cave just like the same old same old what is the payoff for supporting “whoever” wins the primary. In other words if we gain no significant improvements and get no heroic fights where is the payoff in forgoing the most extreme options.

Damned few ‘Spartans’ in the house for “Spartans do not ask how many but where they are”.
Don’t remember the attribution, one of my favorite quotes ever.

The staffs are definitely a very large part of the problem in fact I submit that term limits for staff are more important than for the Pols. They are almost like the Eunuchs serving the Chinese Court. As the new members come and go they are shown by the experienced staff “how things work around here”.

I didn’t expect those who’ve been elected in 08 or earlier and particularly those who have been there for years waiting their turns at plum positions to be able to change overnight. But I expected the 80 freshmen, especially the ones claiming to be Tea Party candidates ( as Renee Ellmers does) to bring a disdain for the status quo and stodgy leadership. I expected audacity and the idea that standing firm on principle was in the end good politics. Fifty nine Republicans voted against today’s version of the final CR for this year maybe half of the Freshman. The rest have been bought.

Some have sold out to the notion that compromise must be the way but that’s still bought in my book. For it is the sum total of all the little compromises made to Bolsheviks and Manic Progressive over the last century that has led us to this sad pass. Most of these compromises were unnecessary, made just to seem like a decent sort or to appear compassionate or some other nonsense.
The major difference between us and the left is that they sensed the effectiveness of accumulating small victories. The Conservatives or most of them have come very late to the realization that this is an existential battle for the light of Humanity. Perhaps I should have known how few really get it. Maybe we can pickup the pieces when the time comes. Maybe.