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Boehner Fends Off Dissent as G.O.P. Takes the Reins

John A. Boehner, with fellow members of Congress on Tuesday, overcame a challenge to his job as speaker of the House.Credit...Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

WASHINGTON — Representative John A. Boehner beat back an embarrassing challenge to his speakership from aggrieved conservatives on Tuesday as Republicans assumed control of both houses of Congress, pledging to restore function and civility to a body that has become a symbol of disorder for most Americans.

Two dozen Republicans voted against Mr. Boehner, and one withheld his support, clouding what should have been a day of euphoria for the party after its definitive midterm election victory. It was the largest number of votes against a speaker from members of his or her own party in at least two decades.

But the defections on the right, which were double what the speaker withstood when he was elected two years ago, illustrated the serious challenges Republicans confront now that they own the political liability that comes with being the majority on Capitol Hill at a time when disgruntled voters are poised to turn against the party in power.

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Boehner and Pelosi Embrace

John A. Boehner of Ohio, the re-elected Speaker of the House, and Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, as the new Republican-led Congress convened.

UPSOUND: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi “This is the people’s house. This is the people’s gavel. In the people’s name, it is my priviledge to hand it to the Speaker of the House for the 114th Congress, the Honorable John Boehner, Mr. Speaker. God Bless you, Mr. Speaker. God Bless America.”

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John A. Boehner of Ohio, the re-elected Speaker of the House, and Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, as the new Republican-led Congress convened.CreditCredit...Jabin Botsford/The New York Times

Addressing the House chamber after the vote, Mr. Boehner made no overt mention of the discord within his party, but urged his colleagues to set aside their differences and prove their skeptics wrong.

“They say that nothing is going to be accomplished here; the division is wider than ever, so gridlock will be even greater,” he said, his voice at times breaking with emotion. “No, this won’t be done in a tidy way. The battle of ideas never ends, and frankly never should.”

Despite the choppy start, Republicans begin the year with a commanding majority. The breadth of their election victories was on full display in the Capitol as members sloshed through a thick coat of fresh snow to begin business for the first day this year.

But even as new members were being sworn in amid pledges of comity and compromise, a showdown between Democrats and Republicans had already surfaced.

President Obama has said that he would veto the item that Republicans have made their first order of business: approving the long-stalled Keystone XL pipeline. Senate Democrats quickly followed suit by blocking a hearing on the pipeline that Republicans had hoped to hold on Wednesday, forcing them to delay the meeting by a day.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the new majority leader, urged Democrats to drop their objections and let the hearing proceed. “We all know that one of the things the Senate is best at doing is not doing much,” he said. “Why don’t we get started?”

House Republicans were less restrained, expressing fury about the president’s threat. “It’s toxic. It’s poisonous,” said Representative John L. Mica of Florida, insisting that the president had dashed hopes of bipartisan compromise on the first day of the new Congress. “The truth is he’s playing to his extreme environmental left.”

That anger may carry more force given that Republicans have their largest House majority since the post-World War II era, with 246 seats. In the Senate, where 12 freshman Republicans were sworn in on Tuesday, the party has 54 seats to the Democrats’ 46, including a lone Democratic freshman. Republicans had not controlled both chambers at once in eight years.

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Members of the 114th Congress taking the oath of office.Credit...Jabin Botsford/The New York Times

In some ways, the partisan fissures were evident even before the new Congress arrived in Washington on Tuesday. The November election swept out of office the last white Democrat in the Deep South and the last Democrat anywhere in rural Appalachia, both once Democratic strongholds.

By land mass, House Republicans now represent about 85 percent of the nation as Democrats become clustered in the more populous metropolitan areas and on the coasts. As that divide has widened over the years, polarization in Washington has increased as well.

The scene in the Capitol on Tuesday was teeming with ceremony and tradition. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in his formal role as president of the Senate, was on hand to swear in the new senators. He blended a conventional “Welcome to the Senate” with a number of humorous personal asides as they stepped up one by one to the well of the Senate chamber to shake his hand.

The atmosphere was heavier in the House. The vote on Mr. Boehner’s fate dragged on for more than an hour as the clerk read aloud the names of all House members.

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Tracking the votes for House speaker.Credit...Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

A last-minute move by Representative Daniel Webster, Republican of Florida, to challenge Mr. Boehner hurt the speaker, most likely costing him more votes than he would have lost otherwise. Initially only two Republican congressmen rose up against Mr. Boehner, both of whom are considered on the fringe of the party and dismissed by leadership as gadflies: Louie Gohmert of Texas and Ted Yoho of Florida. But the entry of Mr. Webster, a more pragmatic Republican who has a cordial relationship with Mr. Boehner, came as somewhat of a surprise.

Mr. Boehner moved swiftly on Tuesday to punish Mr. Webster for his disloyalty, deciding to strip him of his seat on the powerful Rules Committee, a top Republican said.

The opposition to Mr. Boehner reflected the palpable resentment the Republican Party’s base harbors toward its leadership in Washington. Almost since he first took up the speaker’s gavel in 2011, Mr. Boehner has faced calls for his ouster from the far right. Tea Party groups routinely raise money from email solicitations asking their supporters to help “Fire the Speaker.”

Tea Party conservatives felt betrayed anew late last month after Mr. Boehner ignored their pleas to push the government toward another shutdown by denying funding in the federal spending plan to enforce the president’s new immigration orders.

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Senator Mitch McConnell, left, with his family.Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

But ultimately, Mr. Boehner benefited from the fact that there was no real candidate to replace him, Republicans said.

“I had a real internal struggle on my vote today,” said Representative Matt Salmon, Republican of Arizona, a conservative who has clashed with the party’s leaders in the past. “If there was a legitimate opportunity to vote for somebody else that could become speaker, then it’s a different story. But it was clear once the voting had materialized that he was going to be the speaker.”

Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, a Republican who did not vote for Mr. Boehner in 2013 but did so this year, said the attempted ouster of the speaker was “poorly considered and poorly executed.” He added, “This was an effort driven as much by talk radio as by a thoughtful and principled effort to make a change.”

The random nature of some of the protest votes reflected how disorganized the opposition to Mr. Boehner was. One congressman voted for Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, for speaker; another voted for Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama; two voted for Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio. Mr. Gohmert received three votes; Mr. Yoho, two. Each man voted for himself.

Once the final tally was announced in the chamber and Mr. Boehner delivered his speech, the House gave him a standing ovation. Taking a jab at himself, Mr. Boehner, urging members to be seated, said, “It’s still just me.”

Ashley Parker and Emmarie Huetteman contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Boehner Fends Off Dissent as G.O.P. Takes the Reins. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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