Cantor's Rebranding Effort Tested By House Republicans
When the House votes Wednesday on a bill called the Working Families Flexibility Act, it will be the latest test of a Republican effort at rebranding.
The architect of that effort in the House, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., has so far had a mixed record.
In February, Cantor gave a major policy speech at the American Enterprise Institute. His pitch: The Republican Party needed to broaden its message beyond the fiscal fights of the past two years.
"Our House majority will pursue an agenda that is based on a shared vision of creating the conditions of health, happiness and prosperity for more Americans and their families," he said.
Cantor calls that agenda Making Life Work. Others call it an effort to win over women and minorities who favored Democrats in the 2012 election.
But, at least initially, some in Cantor's party seem to be working against this effort. Two weeks after his speech, a majority of House Republicans voted against reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, something that in the past had been an easy vote. There was the House Republican who used a racial slur to refer to immigrants from Mexico. And most recently, Cantor had to pull a health care bill included in the Making Life Work agenda from the floor because it didn't have enough Republican votes to pass.
But he seems undeterred.
Cantor and a handful of his Republican colleagues traveled Tuesday to a Northern Virginia suburb to promote the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013. There, they assembled a small group of business owners and working mothers.
The bill would allow private employers to offer hourly workers comp time instead of overtime if they work more than 40 hours a week. Instead of extra pay, they would get extra paid time off at some later date.
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