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(Bloomberg) -- House Speaker John Boehner concedes the new Republican-led U.S. Congress has had a couple of stumbles as opposition within the party forced the indefinite postponement this week of House border-security legislation.

We want to get off to a fast start this year, Boehner of Ohio said Tuesday, explaining that Republicans who control the House and Senate are seeking to assure Americans were here to listen to their priorities.

Instead, dissent within the party has complicated leaders plans to pass legislation on the House floor. In addition to the border-security vote, House Republican leaders had to pull an anti-abortion measure amid opposition, while their plan to block President Barack Obamas immigration actions in a Department of Homeland Security financing bill drew no votes from moderates.

Governing is tough in this business, said Tom Davis, a former Republican House member from Virginia.

In the sessions opening moments on Jan. 6, Boehner himself was a target of Republican opposition, with 24 of his Republican colleagues voting for someone else to be speaker. He won re-election, though with support from fewer than half of the 434 House members, as some were absent and no Democrats voted for him.

Thomas Mann, a congressional analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said Republican leaders began the new session with mostly symbolic legislation that had no chance of becoming law during Obamas presidency. Their mistake, he said, has been failing to first secure enough support among party members about what these bills should contain.

Its a challenge of having bigger and more diverse caucuses, added Spencer Abraham, a Republican former U.S. senator from Michigan and former U.S. energy secretary.

Republicans control 246 House seats, their largest majority in 70 years. That includes members from more moderate areas of the country along with hard-line Republicans, representing a broader range of viewpoints for leaders to deal with, Abraham said.

Some of the hard-line members objected to the $10 billion border security bill on grounds it didnt go far enough. Last week, Republican leaders scrapped a House vote to ban abortions starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy because a group of centrist members, including women lawmakers, said an exception for rape victims was too limited.

Two weeks ago, 26 House Republicans, mostly moderates, almost helped defeat an amendment to their partys Homeland Security funding bill that would end aid to undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. The measure passed and went to the Senate where Democrats, newly in the minority, said they will block it.

Original post:
Border Bill Postponement Is Latest U.S. House Republican Miscue