By Lisa Lerer and Patrick O’Connor

June 18 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Representative Joe Barton may
be the only person who had a worse day on Capitol Hill yesterday
than BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward.

The Texas Republican sparked a political backlash from both
parties when he apologized to Hayward — at a hearing where
other lawmakers lined up to berate BP — and accused the White
House of a “shakedown” by pressuring BP to set aside $20
billion for damage claims from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Barton retracted his comments hours later after a meeting
with House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, and
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican. The
party leaders told Barton to apologize immediately or lose his
position as ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce
Committee, said a party leadership aide who spoke on condition
of anonymity.

The outcry illustrates Republicans’ difficulty in gaining
political ground, even during a low period for President Barack
Obama, as the party struggles to conquer internal divisions,
said Julian Zelizer, a political science professor at Princeton
University in New Jersey.

Message Discord

“The Republican Party is not totally united on what its
message should be,” Zelizer said in an interview yesterday.
“It’s the Tea Party-versus-leadership tension that we’ve seen
on other issues.”

The flap began at a hearing by the Energy and Commerce
panel on the Gulf of Mexico spill. Lawmakers denounced Hayward
for hours, accusing him of stonewalling and failing to provide
answers about the causes of the explosion.

Barton, though, at the hearing’s beginning apologized to
Hayward. The congressman described the claims fund BP agreed to
establish after its top officials met with Obama on June 16 as
“a $20 billion shakedown.”

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House,”
Barton, 60, told Hayward at the hearing, and later said, “I
apologize” for it.

Less than six hours later, Boehner’s office released a
statement by Barton in which he retracted his apology to BP and
apologized “for using the term ‘shakedown.’”

‘Wrong’

Boehner’s office also issued a separate statement from the
Republican leader, Cantor and Representative Mike Pence, an
Indiana Republican, calling Barton’s statements at the hearing
“wrong.”

Barton’s statement said he regretted “the impact that my
statement this morning implied that BP should not pay for the
consequences of their decisions and actions in this incident.”

The comments by Barton, who was first elected to his
Dallas-area House seat in 1984, inflamed Gulf Coast Republicans,
who are outraged at BP for failing to plug the leaking well.

“I don’t think we need to be apologizing to British
Petroleum,” said Florida Republican Senator George LeMieux.

Representative Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican, said in a
statement that Barton’s comments “call into question his
judgment and ability to serve” in a leadership position on the
Energy and Commerce Committee.

Other fiscally conservative Republicans have criticized the
BP agreement with the Obama administration.

And Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul today
expressed sympathies for Barton in an interview with a radio
station.

“I have never liked the tone of the president when he said
things or his administration says things like he is going to put
the boot on the throat of BP,” he said on Lexington, Kentucky-
based WVLK-AM.

‘Shakedown Politics’

Georgia Republican Representative Tom Price, in a statement
yesterday, said Obama’s insistence on creating an escrow fund
was an example of his administration “exerting its brand of
Chicago-style shakedown politics.”

Representative Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican,
criticized the idea of an escrow fund as a “redistribution-of-
wealth” fund at a Heritage Foundation forum this week.

Former Representative Dick Armey of Texas, a Republican and
a leading funder of the Tea Party movement, said at a meeting
this week with reporters that Obama lacked the constitutional
authority to set up such a fund.

‘Risky’

“They’re trying to make an anti-Obama, anti-Democratic
point out of this recent announcement, but I think it’s risky to
Republicans,” said Zelizer.

Employees of the oil and gas industry have been Barton’s
largest source of campaign cash since 1989, giving him $1.4
million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a
Washington-based research group. That’s more than any other
House member has gotten from the industry. He has raised
$100,470 from oil and gas industry employees for his 2010 re-
election campaign.

Democrats immediately seized on Barton’s statements, seeing
an opportunity to score political points months before the
November elections.

“When people in the Gulf are suffering from actions taken
by BP, Republicans in Congress are apologizing to BP,” House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, referring to the statements
by Barton and Price.

Jon Vogel, executive director of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee, used the comments in an e-mail
fundraising appeal, telling supporters that their donations
would “send an overwhelming message” that Republicans
“shamelessly shill for their Big Oil backers.”

Vice President Joe Biden called Barton’s remarks
“incredibly insensitive, incredibly out-of-touch.”

“There’s no shakedown,” the vice president said at a
White House briefing. “It’s insisting on responsible conduct
and a responsible response to something they caused.”

To contact the reporters responsible for this story:
Lisa Lerer at llerer@bloomberg.net;
Patrick O’Connor in Washington at
Poconnor14@bloomberg.net