Short version: the majority party wins. House Democrats, along with a few "moderate" Republicans started to circulate a bill on immigration that the majority of the majority party opposed. Such bills don't get votes. Why? The majority party has procedural control of the chamber. It must. The House can't vote on every bill, and there must be a mechanism that filters out a bunch of the stuff that gets introduced. The mechanism is that the majority party, and functionally, the Speaker and committee chairs, decide. By refusing to schedule action, such people can prevent a bill from passing, even if a bill would have gotten a majority. Does that piss you off? Too fuckin' bad. That's how the House works, and while there are plenty of asymmetries, both parties really do follow this.
There is, however, the theoretical possibility of a discharge petition. Gather 218 signatures, and you can force a vote, usually under a closed rule (although in this case, it was written such that the petition combined multiple bills under a "queen of the hill" rule, but... never mind). In theory, that means the majority party shouldn't be able to block shit, though.* 218 is precisely as many signatures as are needed to pass a bill in a fully-seated House. Why don't discharge petitions work? Why would someone be willing to vote for a bill, but not sign a petition? Basically, the majority party's most important power is control of procedure, so they really don't want you signing that petition. Act like you might, and they'll threaten to kill your puppy. Or, if you are a sociopath, as plenty in Congress are, they'll go to the pet store, pick up a bunch of puppies, and threaten not to kill them. Whatever it takes, that is what they will do to keep you from signing the discharge petition.
So, no discharge petition has been successful since 2002.
At the start of the immigration mess, I said it wouldn't work. Towards the end, I got skittish, and thought that this time, it might work in the House as a Pyrrhic victory for the bill supporters, even though the bill would have no chance whatsoever of being signed into law, but as of Tuesday, even that fell apart. The last couple of bill supporters caved, and they are going along with some as-yet unspecified Republican plan to... do... something vaguely kinda immigration-like. What will happen? Probably nothing. The key lessons here are:
1) Discharge petitions fail.
2) Republican "moderates" will cave like the feckless c...ongressmen that they are.
3) There is no serious policy-making happening in Congress. You knew that, right?
At least Paul Ryan can rest easy that the Freedom Caucus won't Boehner him for letting a Democratic immigration bill reach the floor. So, there's that.
*In theory, communism works. In theory.-- Simpson, H. 1994.
