New divisions threaten unity among Congressional Republicans
ANDREW MORIN: The Trump-era consensus among House Republicans could be winding down amid worries of a landslide defeat and divisive intra-party conflicts.
Tensions have been particularly fraught within the GOP caucus since the 2010 congressional elections, which greatly swelled their ranks but also swept in a new variety of arch-conservative representatives supported by the nascent Tea Party movement. Many of these members formed the House Freedom Caucus, the most far-right group in the House, which for years waged a war against both then-President Barack Obama as well as Republican congressional leadership under former Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California.
Frustrated by Boehner’s reliance on Democratic votes to pass several key bills over the objections of Republicans and his rejection of the most radical-right demands of some House Republicans, efforts to replace Boehner accelerated in 2015. Following a failed bid to defeat Boehner in the January election for Speaker of the House, Rep. Mark Meadows, a Republican member of the Freedom Caucus from North Carolina, filed a motion to vacate the chair in another provocative play to remove the speaker from power. While the move failed at the time, it would succeed in pushing Boehner towards his resignation three months later, scoring a victory for the conservative wing in the intra-party conflict.
For the past few years, however, many of these tensions have largely been papered over, buoyed in part by a substantial redistribution of power within the caucus. The formerly proud moderate Republican tradition has largely fallen. 21 of the 31 House Republicans who did not endorse President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, have since retired or lost reelection. Other former moderate Republicans, like Elise Stenafik of New York, have rebranded as loyalists to the president. In a moment symbolic of the fate of the moderates, the Republican Main Street Caucus, an association formed to counter the party’s right wing, dissolved itself in 2019 amid losses in the 2018 midterms and organizational conflicts.
The right, by comparison, is now ascendant. Meadows is now White House Chief of Staff, a post he inherited from fellow former Freedom Caucus member Mick Mulvaney. Other representatives on the GOP’s right wing, such as Matt Gaetz of Florida and Doug Collins of Georgia, have become close allies of the Trump administration on Capitol Hill.
With the caucus gravitating towards its conservative pole and tightly under the president’s grip, major defections have become rarer, even during the party’s more controversial votes. In 2017, only 13 of the 240 members of the Republican caucus voted against the Trump administration’s landmark tax cut bill, and eight of the thirteen have since left Congress. Similar discipline has been seen on issues like the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, and, perhaps most notably, on the president’s impeachment, which saw no Republicans vote to authorize an inquiry, let alone impeach.
This unity, however, may prove to be short-lived. A variety of new tensions, as well as the impending possibility of wide-scale defeat in November, threatens to undo the delicate balance within the caucus.
This summer, an early sign of resumed intra-party warfare spilled out into the open over comments by Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third highest ranking House Republican. Despite a reliably Republican voting record, Cheney’s repeated clashes with the president on Twitter over Russian bounties on American soldiers and the president’s treatment of Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leader in the government’s response to Covid-19, have drawn the ire of the Freedom Caucus and its conservative allies. In a widely publicized Republican conference meeting, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, among others on the party’s right, sharply attacked Cheney for insufficient loyalty to the president. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida continued the attack after the meeting, stating that “Liz Cheney should step down or be removed” in a tweet.
The resulting defense of Cheney by McCarthy, now House Minority Leader, harkens back to the Boehner years, with the fury of the Freedom Caucus once again directed toward House leadership perceived as too compromising and insufficiently conservative.
Unity among the conference has been further damaged by a variety of other crises, notably the rise of QAnon, the right-wing conspiracy theory. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right recent victor of the Republican primary in a heavily conservative district in Northwest Georgia associated with the conspiracy, has aroused concern among many members of the party. While most of the leadership has disavowed some of her rhetoric, repeated pleas by more moderate members of the caucus to support her Republican opponent in the primary went largely unanswered, with what little resistance there was drying up after her victory.
McCarthy’s tepid response to Greene and other candidates has led to frustration among the remaining moderates of the party, as well as among several party establishment figures. These concerns have only increased as Republican chances to retake the House in 2020 have slipped away, replaced by a high likelihood of the caucus shrinking even further. The blame can be attributed to McCarthy’s loyal stance towards the president. For McCarthy, who has never been able to rally Freedom Caucus support, a loss of establishment backing would be fatal.
The disputes among the House Republican Conference have only grown deeper and more public as the president’s fortunes continue to decline. Should Trump lose reelection next month, the party’s future seemingly lies open. No matter who leads the GOP into the next Congress, whether a revived moderate presence, an ascendant far-right, or the increasingly battered establishment wing, control of the caucus will prove to be a daunting task.
Andrew Morin is a freshman in the SFS from New York with an interest in congressional politics and foreign policy.