House Republican intransigence.

Today, the House passed the Senate's version of the Violence Against Women Act.  In the details of the history of House Republican actions on the renewal of this popular bill, comes this nugget from CSM:

"In 2012, a similar bill passed the House 222 to 205 with 23 Republicans in opposition and six Democrats in favor and with similarly broad bipartisan appeal in the Senate. 

However, that bill foundered when Republicans insisted that a procedural point made the Senate bill invalid. (Senate Democrats included a fee in their bill to pay for more visas for abused undocumented immigrants, violating the constitutional rule that all revenue measures have to originate in the House.)"

Now, of course we know that, as stated in the US Constitution's Article 1, Section 7:

"All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills."

Kicking and screaming, House Republicans did everything they could to block the renewal of the Violence against Women Act, up until it became politically untenable to remain on the sidelines.

We saw this with the fiscal cliff -- we went over the cliff, after all.

We saw this with the Hurricane Sandy relief aid bill -- House Republicans allowed the previous session's bill to expire at the end of the term, rather than act on it.

Now we have the see-castration.

When you hear Republicans complain about a lack of leadership, the truth is, House Republicans do not want to be led anywhere, rather, they need to be pushed kicking and screaming.