The Republican dilemma deeper operation

One year after Mitt Romney ran for president, Republicans seem leaderless. Romney has returned to private life, and potential rising stars have stumbled.

WASHINGTON — A year after losing a presidential race many Republicans thought was winnable, the party arguably is in worse shape than before. The GOP is struggling to control tensions between its tea party and establishment wings and watching approval ratings sink to record lows.

It's almost quaint to recall that soon after Mitt Romney lost to President Barack Obama, the Republican National Committee recommended only one policy change: endorsing an immigration overhaul, g-suite cardinal manchester in hopes of attracting Hispanic voters.

Related: Shutdown got people talking, Cruz claims

That immigration bill is now struggling for life and attention in the Republican-run House. The bigger worry for many party leaders is the growing rift between business-oriented Republicans and the GOP's more ideological wing. Each accuses the other of bungling the debt ceiling and government shutdown dramas, widely seen as a major Republican embarrassment.

The problems don't end there.

Polls show the GOP nominee trailing in a Virginia governor's race that history says a Republican should win. At the national level, it's hard to recall when Republicans seemed so leaderless. Romney has returned to private life. Potential rising stars have stumbled, as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida did when he angered conservative activists by pushing the immigration measure through the Senate.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is preoccupied with his Kentucky re-election bid, squeezed between a tea party GOP challenger on the right and a well-regarded Democrat on the left. In the House, Speaker John Boehner of Ohio cemented his support among Republican colleagues only by letting them vote heavily against a bipartisan plan to avert an unprecedented default on U.S. obligations.

The legislation, which also reopened the government, passed mostly with Democratic votes. That's hardly the type of victory a Republican speaker hangs on his wall.

Related: Furloughed federal workers must return jobless benefits

Eyeing this troubling landscape, many Republican campaign veterans hope conservative die-hards will narrow their differences with the party's more pragmatic members before next year's elections and the 2016 presidential campaign.

"If we don't find common ground and stand on the same side of the line, we're going to have a very ugly and rough couple of years," said Sara Taylor Fagen, who directed political affairs in President George W. Bush's White House.

Fagen acknowledged newfound tensions between business-oriented Republicans and pro-tea-party Republicans, many of whom refused to raise the debt limit unless Democrats agreed to politically unattainable demands. At risk in the impasse was a government default that would have hammered the economy.

Yet it will be hard to close the rift between the two factions, Fagen said. "I don't think they communicate."

To John Ullyot, a former Senate aide to moderate Republicans, "the big takeaway from this last battle was the true separation of the pro-business, establishment Republicans, and what they see as the rebels who are driving the party over the cliff."

Many GOP donors, Ullyot said g-suite in oldham, "are starting to hold off on any contributions for the time being, until the party figures out how to deal with these upstart Republicans."

Other Republicans say the situation isn't so dire.

GOP Gov. Chris Christie is coasting toward re-election in Democratic-leaning New Jersey. Many throughout the country are complaining about the troubled sign-up process for Obama's health care law, the Republicans' favorite policy target.

Talk of a party rift "is way overplayed," said Henry Barbour, an activist from Mississippi and co-author of the RNC's post-mortem report on Romney's loss. He said Republicans of all stripes overwhelmingly agree on basic issues, including reduced federal spending, opposition to the health law and "preserving freedom."

But Barbour agreed that top Republicans differ over tactics. He took issue with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's ultimately doomed drive to block Obama's health care law by taking the federal budget hostage.

Longtime Republican adviser Charlie Black said the battles over the budget and debt ceiling clearly hurt the party. But Black, who advised Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, played down the internal divide.

"In most places," he said, "we're 95 percent together." But he added, "there will be a few primaries where there will be some differences."

The specter of Republican primaries disturbs many party loyalists. In the past two Senate elections, tea party-backed insurgents defeated nearly a dozen mainstream Republicans — three of them incumbent senators — in primaries.

Campaign professionals say the results cost Republicans up to five Senate seats they could have won if their nominees were not tea-party candidates.

Now there's talk of an establishment Republican counterrevolution, in which business-oriented candidates would challenge tea party incumbents in next year's primaries.

In Michigan, investment banker Brian Ellis is taking on tea party-backed Rep. Justin Amash, and real estate lawyer David Trott is seeking to oust Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, considered by some Republicans to be more of a gadfly than a reliable tea partyer.

It's not clear whether more than a handful of such challenges will emerge. A bigger question is whether business groups, often supportive of Republicans of all ideological types, will steer more money into bids to oust tea partyers who played down the threat of a federal default.

In interviews, numerous business leaders took wait-and-see stands.

"We have no idea what we're going to have on the table" in the 2014 primaries, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue told reporters.

Peter A. Wish, a veteran GOP fundraiser from Sarasota, Fla., said the activists he talks with are "pretty much divided" over the fallout from the debt and shutdown debates. Some support Cruz's hard-line stand "regardless of the consequences," Wish said. But another faction, he said, "is totally fed up" with an ideological group "picking fights it can't win."

Tea party groups aren't waiting cardinal manchester.

For a third straight election, they hope to oust Republican incumbents they view as too willing to work with Democrats. Those targets could include 35-year veteran Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, whose resume includes managing the 1998 effort to impeach President Bill Clinton.

Many Republican consultants say the party's internal struggles will continue until a leader emerges as the 2016 presidential nominee. Fagen, however, says she worries that the nominee could be nearly perfect, "but it's not good enough for the ideologues, and they run a third-party candidate."

Future The United States Capitol

The structure may look good from a distance, but officials say more than 1,000 cracks and other problems will require nearly $60 million in repairs.

WASHINGTON — The 150-year-old U.S. Capitol dome will be sheathed in scaffolding for about two years during its first major restoration since 1960, officials said Tuesday.

Stephen T. Ayers, the architect of the Capitol, g-suite in oldham said the structure may look good from a distance, but up close, more than 1,000 cracks and other structural problems need attention now.

"Under the paint, age and weather have taken its toll," Ayers said in a statement.

The restoration is expected to cost about $59.6 million, according to Justin Kieffer, Ayers' spokesman.

Kieffer said the dome damage is not the result of a 2011 earthquake that damaged other structures in the Capitol, g-suite manchester including the Washington Monument.

Many buildings and monuments in the District of Columbia date back to the mid-1800s and are periodically covered in scaffolding during repairs.

The Washington Monument, built in 1848, is covered with scaffolding as workers repair the earthquake damage. A few blocks away, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where many White House staff work, recently shed scaffolding after years of repairs. That building was completed in 1888.

Repairs on the Capitol dome are not expected to affect legislative business and are being designed to minimally affect tours and other events.

When possible, the architect's office said, repairs will be done at night and on weekends. Inside the Capitol Rotunda, a doughnut-shaped canopy will be built to protect visitors from construction debris and will ensure the "Apotheosis of Washington," a fresco painting in the center of the Capitol, g-suite cardinal can still be seen.

The Architect of the Capitol's office plans to post regular updates on the construction on its website.

The new gun show background check

A voluntary deal in New York calls for all gun buyers to be cleared by a background check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was in New York on Sunday to tour her first gun show since being shot in the head to review new measures that require background checks for buyers.

Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, who describe themselves as supporters of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right to bear arms, Set up Business in Hong Kong are lobbying to have similar steps adopted at gun shows around the United States.

The procedures, a voluntary deal between gunshow operators and New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, call for all gun buyers be cleared via the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

Such a move closes the so-called "gun show" loophole, which allowed show buyers to avoid the background checks they are required to go have when buying firearms at a retail outlet.

"It's great to be able to see people sell the firearms they have collected," Kelly said, noting that he and Giffords still have firearms in their home. "It's great for Gabby and I to see a system that works."

Giffords and 18 others, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, were shot in January 2011 by Jared Lee Loughner during a constituents' meeting held in a supermarket parking lot. The judge and the child were among six people who died in the incident. Loughner pleaded guilty last November and was sentenced to life without parole.

"Stopping gun violence takes courage hong kong company register. The courage to do what's right. The courage of new ideas," said Giffords, a Democrat who resigned from office a year after the attack to focus on her recovery.

"Now is the time to come together, be responsible ... Be bold, be courageous, the nation is counting on you," she said, speaking in a halting fashion.

David Petronis, president of the New Eastcoast Arms Collectors Associates, which organized the show, said he has been performing background checks at his shows for 30 years.

He was less supportive of New York's SAFE Act, which was passed early this year following the mass shooting in nearby Newtown, Connecticut. It bans assault weapons and limits the size of ammunition magazines.

"I believe that (what) the attorney general has done with the gun shows is completely different than what the SAFE Act did to New York State itself," Petronis said. "I take more issue with the SAFE Act than what we agreed to with Schneiderman."

Members of a Second Amendment advocacy group called NY2A, who picketed outside the event, said they were unimpressed by the background check deal.

"What happened to is a tragedy," how to register a business said Jake Palmateer, an organizer with the group. "However, we feel they are using the emotions connected with that tragic event to pursue a political agenda that damages the civil rights of all Americans."