Roughly four months after the Jan. 6 attack, congressional negotiations began in earnest on how best to investigate the insurrectionist violence at the Capitol. A variety of members envisioned a panel along the lines of the 9/11 Commission, but it fell to a handful of members to work out the details.

GOP leaders dispatched a trusted ally, Republican Rep. John Katko of New York, to negotiate the terms. Then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy carefully included unreasonable demands he expected Democrats to reject. That plan didn’t work: Katko successfully struck a deal in which Democrats agreed to the GOP’s terms.

At that point, Republican leaders rejected the compromise they’d asked for, and Katko was the odd man out. The New Yorker did exactly what was expected of him — he reached a bipartisan deal his party ostensibly wanted — before discovering that his party had changed its mind.

Lately, Katko’s experience keeps coming to mind.

A couple of weeks ago, for example, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith announced a bipartisan agreement with Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden on tax policy. Following months of talks, the Missouri Republican secured an extension of Trump-era tax breaks for businesses, while the Oregon Democrat secured an expansion of the child tax credit.

It’s not yet clear whether the plan will pass — though we probably won’t have to wait too long to find out — but what is clear is the fact that Smith isn’t exactly being celebrated by his allies. Axios reported over the weekend:

The House GOP’s top tax writer doesn’t just face blowback over the surprise deal he unveiled this month: Now the background chatter suggests Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) could lose his gavel. … Senior Republican sources said Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) — who narrowly lost a heated three-way race for the position in 2023 — has been urged to challenge House Ways and Means chairman for the top job.

Meanwhile, in the upper chamber, a similar dynamic is playing out in ridiculous fashion. USA Today reported:

The Oklahoma Republican Party approved a resolution censuring Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., and attacking the Republican lawmaker for negotiating with Democrats on a potential border deal. The resolution, shared by Oklahoma State Sen. Dusty Deevers on X, formerly Twitter, accuses Lankford of “playing fast and loose with Democrats on our border policy.”

The same resolution, which was approved on Saturday, went on to call on the conservative Republican senator to “cease and desist jeopardizing the security and liberty” of Americans. [Update: See below.]

Just so we’re all clear, Lankford appears to have negotiated a bipartisan package on border and immigration policy — the details of which the Oklahoma Republican Party has not seen — which the far-right senator believes will be “by far the most conservative border security bill in four decades.” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina added that they simply won’t “get a better deal” than the one Democrats were prepared to accept.

For his trouble, Lankford has been formally rebuked by his own state GOP.

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What’s more, it’s not just the Oklahoma Republican Party. Lankford also appeared on Fox News over the weekend, and was asked why he’d give Biden an election-year victory. The senator responded by explaining the bipartisan agreement would be an effective policy — which he thought was his own party’s goal.

Like Katko in 2021, Smith and Lankford thought they were pursuing their own party’s priorities. Like Katko in 2021, Smith and Lankford are paying a price for succeeding.

The message to GOP officials couldn’t be much clearer: Don’t compromise, don’t make concessions, and don’t try to work across the aisle to solve problems.

Those Republicans who fail to heed such a directive should apparently expect friendly fire.

Update: The chair of the Oklahoma GOP issued a statement claiming that the meeting at which Lankford was censured was “illegitimate.” The vice chair of the Oklahoma GOP apparently disagrees.