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By Bill Whitaker 

Congressman Bill Flores’ wife tells me he’s an eternal optimist, but the 114th Congress will test that claim. Not only is President Obama standing firm on issues ranging from the Keystone XL pipeline to immigration but some of Flores’ fellow Republicans are complicating his first significant shot at national leadership.

What’s happening in Washington these days isn’t so different from what’s happening in Austin. When Republicans aren’t debating Democratic counterparts, they’re running an unending tea party gauntlet of GOP purity tests to prove they’re conservative enough and not some damn RINO — Republican in Name Only.

All this only intensifies gridlock.

Flores, who established his credentials as a conservative Republican in his 2010 election, impressed enough fellow conservatives that last fall they elected him to chair the influential Republican Study Committee, made up of 170 or so of the most conservative House Republicans. They debate and craft proposals, then press House leadership to run with them.

So no sooner does Flores beat South Carolina Republican and tea party favorite Mick Mulvaney for RSC chairmanship than Mulvaney and several other Republicans hint that Flores is too cozy with Republican House leadership, including Speaker John Boehner, and that the RSC is no longer conservative enough for them. So they form their own really, really conservative group.

Key difference I can see: The Republican Study Committee is no less conservative than before but recognizes an obligation to work with Boehner and House leaders on solutions to such controversial programs as the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, the new, far-right House Freedom Caucus has won the nickname of the “hell no” caucus, though leaders claim they’re crafting serious policy options. We will see.

Because the Freedom Caucus has far fewer members, its leaders claim the group can be more agile in developing issues. Its numbers — if it reaches 40 — could also block Republican leaders on certain legislation, at least without some Democratic help.

To his credit, Flores, a 60-year-old Bryan Republican, declines to bad-mouth the caucus and even suggests it could neatly complement RSC work. He acknowledges his declared strategy for pressing actual conservative solutions probably didn’t strike the handful of Republicans now making up the House Freedom Caucus as right-wing enough.

Or maybe contrary enough.

“I ran saying I want us to be a positive conservative influence,” Flores told me at Thursday’s McLennan County Republican Club meeting. “I don’t want to be a disruptive influence. I want us to go out there and, to the extent we can be collaborative in pushing leadership in a more conservative direction — well, I think we’re better off doing that rather than standing off to one side and throwing rocks at the leadership.”

He dismisses any suggestion he was the House leadership’s man: “It goes beyond the pale. If I’d been the leadership’s candidate, I would have lost.”

While Flores pushed House leadership to stage yet another futile House vote to repeal Obamacare — primarily to help newly elected conservative Republicans keep a pledge they’d made to win their seats in 2014 — he and other conservatives say they face a greater challenge than repeal votes: producing an alternative health care plan.

Flores says RSC members with medical and insurance backgrounds are now busily crafting a replacement plan. It involves generous tax credits to enable families to buy insurance plans that fit their needs rather than plans with coverage dictated by the government. It would scrap current prohibitions on buying insurance across state lines.

Irony: President Obama shows little inclination to bend, even though his signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, is endangered by an upcoming Supreme Court decision that could throw millions off health insurance. And both he and the House Freedom Caucus have made immigration reform that much more unlikely this session.

“I don’t think he has a good grasp of what it takes to have a good relationship,” Flores said of the president. “At the end of the Bush administration, he had people calling on Congress every day. They were supposed to talk to so many members every day. Well, I’ve met my legislative liaison (from the Obama White House) twice — once when I got elected and sworn in in 2011 and once at the beginning of 2013 when they brought me my inauguration tickets.”

That’s more than Flores is likely to get from the House Freedom Caucus. Its membership is by invitation only.