Republicans eager to tar the new majority as excessively heavy-handed put Democrats on the spot Tuesday, examining in detail a chaotic night when standard voting procedures were not followed.

“There was so much going on” the night of Aug. 2, 2007, “We simply stopped — we weren’t doing anything,” Kevin Hanrahan, a senior House clerk, told a special internal committee.

Speaker Pro Tem Michael R. McNulty, D-N.Y., paused for several minutes before cracking the gavel. During that lull, Democrats were switching votes to try to defeat a GOP motion to reconsider an appropriations bill (HR 3161). Republicans were hollering toward the dias, upset as they watched the roll call move in the other direction.

“The noise in that place was deafening,” McNulty said. McNulty testified that he was “not aware of” any instructions from Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., to stop the vote as soon as Democrats pulled ahead, and in fact was unable to hear much over the din in the chamber.

McNulty called talk of Hoyer making such an order “folklore.”

When the gavel finally did fall, some members were still trying to change votes or get their votes registered and an official tally slip had not yet been handed to McNulty.

“While I erred, there was no ill intent on my part,” McNulty told the committee.

Indiana Republican Mike Pence — interrogating McNulty and others in public after months of closed-door interviews — chided his colleague, saying he “sidestepped a long-standing procedural safeguard designed to ensure the integrity of the vote on the floor of the House.”

“I believe that the evidence gathered by the select committee will show that the chair rushed to close the vote in the face of pressure from Democratic leadership,” said Pence.

Had Republicans won that night, it would have been a morale-booster and a rare political victory in a chamber where the minority has few opportunities to force votes on tough issues — in this case to deny food stamps to illegal aliens.

Instead, that night became a talking point of a different sort — used repeatedly to make the partisan point that Democrats don’t follow their own rule against keeping votes open for the sole purpose of changing the result.

That new rule was imposed by Democrats to demonstrate their determination to run things differently than former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas (1985-2006), who famously kept one vote open for three hours, until the GOP got the result it wanted.

Now that they’ve been living under the new rule for more than a year, Hoyer told the investigative panel he “would not be unhappy if this committee wanted to do away with it because it is unenforceable.”

Changing or scrapping that rule is one of the recommendations that might come out of the unusual investigation.

McNulty apologized for the confusion the day after the procedural ruckus, and for months declined to take a turn running the floor for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

He returned to the pro tem rotation after giving private testimony in April to the Select Committee to Investigate Voting Irregularities of Roll Call 814, as the investigative panel is formally known.

First posted May 13, 2008 1:11 p.m.