Bitter Strife, Friction On Steroids Inside The Effectively Leaderless House Republican Conference

The Democrats Should Give Matt Gaetz An Award

Yesterday, Trump was on Howard Kurtz’s Fox shown when he admitted he’s thinking about a national abortion ban, exactly what Republicans running statewide in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona… and in swing districts everywhere would like to see not become an issue. He teased a 16-week national abortion ban. “We’re going to find out,” he said. “Pretty soon, I’m gonna be making a decision. I would like to see if we could make both sides happy.” It’s more likely that he would make neither side happy. And what it’s sure to do is further divide Republicans. Majorities of voters across the country— even in red states like Kansas, Montana and Kentucky— have made it clear that they don’t want the government intruding between women, their families and their doctors in this most delicate and personal of all matters. 

Trump wading into it is just going to make reelection bids even worse for swing district incumbents like New Yorkers Nick LaLota, Brandon Williams, Anthony D’Esposito, Marc Molinaro and Mike Lawler, Californians like David Valadao, Mike Garcia, Young Kim, Michelle Steel, John Duarte and Ken Calvert and vulnerable members like Tom Kean (R-NJ), Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), Monica De La Cruz (R-TX), John James (R-MI), Bill Huizenger (R-MI), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Scott Perry (R-PA) Jen Kiggans (R-VA), Rob Wittman (R-VA), Bryan Steil (R-WI), Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), David Schweikert (R-AZ), Zach Nunn (R-IA), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), Donald Bacon (R-NE), Maria Salazar (R-FL), Laurel Lee (R-FL), Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Mike Turner (R-OH).

And this is just not the right time for this kind of internal dissension for the GOP. The House conference is a mess and there are serious fault lines around the budget, Ukraine, the border and Freedom Caucus confrontational tactics. And primaries. A number of Republicans are involved with aiding insurgents primarying incumbents. MAGA Mike is so weak that he doesn’t have the clout it would take to get anyone to pay attention to him. Yesterday, CNN reported that there are primaries in South Carolina, Illinois, Texas and Virginia that have members of MAGA Mike’s conference at each other’s throats, “inflaming tensions in a conference where emotions are still raw in the aftermath of Kevin McCarthy’s unprecedented ouster atop the House.” 

MM: “Knock it off.” Matt Gaetz, who’s behind most of the tumult and backstabbing is leading efforts to oust Mike Bost (R-IL) and Tony Gonzales (R-TX). He told CNN that he “would love nothing more than to just go after Democrats. But if Republicans are going to dress up like Democrats in drag, I’m going to go after them too. Because at the end of the day, we’re not judged by how many Republicans we have in Congress. We’re judged on whether or not we save the country.”

The feud underscores how the razor-thin House majority has proven to be almost ungovernable, leading to a state of gridlock and internal GOP warfare that has defined the 118th Congress. The battle has often pitted hardliners who advocate a no-compromise approach and want to go toe-to-toe with Democrats— against many Republicans who believe they should aim for incremental victories at a time of divided government.

Yet as they struggle to hang onto their two-seat majority, Republicans have been distracted for months by internal party feuds over tactics, which many fear will only make it harder to stay in power. The primary battles are only adding to the tension.

Rep. Don Bacon, a swing-district Nebraska Republican, said the mood within the House GOP is “depressing” and that his party needs to do “some soul-searching.”

“It is depressing when you have your own team turning on each other because you don’t win when that happens. Teams win,” Bacon said. “We’ve undermined the norms of what we’ve had going back, really, a couple centuries, frankly. … And now we’re campaigning in each others’ districts. It undermines the team. So, I think it’s wrong.”

Rep. William Timmons of South Carolina is one of the embattled incumbents trying to hang on, as several members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus are trying to boot him from the seat in favor of his right-wing opponent

Rep. Ralph Norman, a fellow South Carolina Republican and member of the House Freedom Caucus, said he and about a dozen other House GOP hardliners are working on holding a “big event” for Timmons’ challenger, Adam Morgan, who is the leader of South Carolina’s Freedom Caucus.

Norman brushed off the criticism from his colleagues and said Morgan will be “one of us.”

“We have to make some drastic changes,” Norman told CNN. “We’re losing our country. We’re going bankrupt. He just had to take a leadership role in my opinion. And we’ve got a man now that’s heading the Freedom Caucus in South Carolina. He will fight for freedom. And he will be one of us.”

Timmons, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump, defended his conservative voting record and aired his frustrations during a closed-door meeting last week, according to sources in the room.

“I don’t think it’s about me, I think they’re fighting over other things. But you know, at the end of day, if you’re not friends with somebody that votes with you 94% of the time, you’re not going to have a lot of friends,” Timmons told CNN.

But it’s not just hardliners who are making moves against their colleagues. Half a dozen House Republicans who are normally allied with leadership, including House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers, are slated to attend an upcoming fundraiser for the Republican candidate challenging Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good, according to multiple sources.

Good was one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy and has created his share of enemies inside the conference with his brash style— including fellow Virginia Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, who is among those boosting Good’s primary opponent, Navy SEAL John McGuire.

Rep. Eli Crane, an Arizona Republican who also voted to oust McCarthy, says he too is being targeted in his primary because of his vote.

“You know how this town works,” Crane told CNN. “You can’t come up here and just start making waves and not pay for it, right? So the way I see it is good. It just reaffirms that I’m doing what I came here to do.”

The member-on-member primary fights have become such a headache that Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise both took time during a closed-door presentation at their annual retreat last week to discourage members from supporting primary challenges against each other, according to sources in the room.

Yet across the country on that same day: Gaetz was rallying in Texas for Brandon Herrera in his bid to defeat Gonzales ahead of the May 28 runoff.

Gaetz was embracing the split-screen moment.

“While the rest of my colleagues on Thursday will be on retreat, I’m going to be on the advance,” he said last week.

Gaetz’s beef with Gonzales: His vote in 2022 for a gun safety law that was enacted in the wake of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which is part of Gonzales’ district. Herrera, a gun-rights activist, has seized on that vote in his campaign to oust Gonzales in the runoff.

CNN has reached out to Herrera for comment on this story.

Gonzales, who represents a border district, also tangled with GOP hardliners— including fellow Texan Chip Roy— as they were negotiating the House Republicans’ immigration proposal, even as he voted for the final product, known as HR 2. And in 2022, the Texas Republican voted with a minority of his conference to codify same-sex marriage.

Gonzales says he stands by his votes.

“Of course,” Gonzales said. “Look what happened in Uvalde should have never happened. Not because he was 18 years old. Not because it was an AR, because he was batshit crazy, right? So crazy people should not have access to kill innocent people.”

Gonzales added: “On same-sex marriage, look I’m a father of six. Whatever a gay is, I’m about as further away as far away from that as possible. But I’ve served with all different kinds of people in the military. You name it and I look at … the merit of an individual.”

When asked for his reaction about Gaetz’s move against him, Gonzales said: “Who?”

“I don’t pay attention to other members,” Gonzales added. “I’ve got enough going on in my district. We got our hands full.”

Bost, the southern Illinois Republican, won Trump’s endorsement after Johnson and Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, the House GOP’s campaign chief, went to Mar-a-Lago to seek the former president’s backing. Still, Gaetz campaigned for Bost’s opponent, Darren Bailey, ahead of Tuesday’s primary.

Gaetz is on a vanity tour, Bost said.

“Well, that’s because it’s about Matt Gaetz,” Bost said. “It’s not about what is best for the future of this United States.”

In interviews with scores of GOP members, the anger within the conference was palpable.

“I find that unacceptable behavior. I’ve never worked against another Republican, even ones I had profound disagreement with,” veteran GOP Rep. Tom Cole, a member of the leadership team, told CNN. “They need to remember it’s a very small town, you’re gonna see them again, and they’re gonna be here. And it’s just a very unprofessional way to act.”

And party leaders said they would rally behind Gonzales, even as they expressed concerns about his race.

“I’m concerned anytime one of our incumbents are in a runoff,” Hudson told CNN. Asked what he thought about Gaetz’s efforts, Hudson said: “I don’t think much about it. I don’t think it’ll have a factor.”

But Gaetz didn’t rule out intervening in other members’ districts.

“I will go to any place in this country where we can pick up seats, where we have Republicans who are not acting in adherence with our values and our principles,” Gaetz said. “Let the battle begin.”

The fight is exposing divisions in the Texas delegation as well. Roy, who battled behind the scenes with Gonzales last year before they ultimately settled on a GOP immigration plan that passed the House, wouldn’t say if he’d back Gonzales.

“Look, I haven’t gotten into any of that at this point,” Roy said.

Gonzales downplayed any support his opponent might get from other lawmakers, dismissing Herrera, who has a successful Youtube channel with millions of subscribers, as a “YouTuber.”

“I don’t even know what a YouTuber does. I mean, I know what I did to become a (Navy) Master Chief: I busted my ass, I fought in two wars,” Gonzales told CNN. “So I’m not worried about it. Let them all pop their heads out. Anyone who wants to come against me, pop their heads out.”

Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy's cash-rich SuperPAC is helping finance primaries against Good, Crane and Nancy Mace (R-SC) and encouraging the Ethics Committee to oust Gaetz for statutory rape. At the same time, Bannon's podcast pushes the far right insurgent candidates against more mainstream incumbents. According to Sam Brody and Reese Gorman, thereare at least 21 GOP incumbents with serious primary challengers. 3— Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Steve Womack (R-AR) and Jake Ellzey (R-TX)— have already scraped by with narrow margins against underfunded MAGAt challengers. Even when Trump endorses the more establishment incumbent— as he's been doing— the insurgents are getting endorsements from crackpot fringe MAGA characters like Michael Flynn, My Pillow nut Mike Lindell and Roger Stone.

Brodey and Reese wrote that “[T]he more important upshot of any member having to worry about a primary threat, no matter how marginal, may not be who wins— it may be how members adjust their behavior to survive… While Trump often put Republicans in a difficult position when they had to defend his near-daily controversies, he offered many of them something they desperately desired: a cheat code to avoid primary challenges. Republicans during the Trump era were largely measured by their support of Trump. Gone were the Heritage Action or Club for Growth scores to rank a Republican’s conservatism, or the need to collect endorsements from across the GOP spectrum, or even the need to spend considerable time in the district. Republicans, by and large, only needed Trump’s endorsement to be considered sufficiently conservative and avoid a credible threat. That fealty of Republicans to Trump further reinforced his power in the party, and further exacerbated the transformation of the party into his image… With just about every Republican claiming the mantle of a ‘Trump Republican,’ being ‘pro-Trump’ might not be the same prophylactic that it once was against primary challengers. (If every Republican is pro-Trump, is anyone really pro-Trump?)”

Perhaps more than any other primary fight, the one in West Virginia’s 1st District illustrates the singular dynamics at this fraught moment within the Republican Party.

The incumbent, Rep. Carol Miller, has represented this district since 2019. Trump won it by over 40 points in 2020. Miller voted to throw out Biden’s Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 and has been a Trump ally. But in general, she has quietly gone about her business in Congress, and has cast votes to keep the government open and avoid defaults on the national debt.

Miller’s opponent is Derrick Evans, a former West Virginia state lawmaker who might be the purest expression of the MAGA id and political incentive structure on display anywhere in the country.

Evans’ proudest credential appears to be the fact that he was charged with crimes for his actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The high point of his campaign was Trump himself sharing Evans’ post on the Truth Social platform of their mugshots side by side. (In accepting a three-month prison sentence for his crimes in 2022, Evans expressed remorse.)

Now, the candidate’s feed on X is full of daily outrage bait. “White liberal women are the greatest threat to the future of our constitutional republic,” he posted recently. He has called for “arresting the people who stole the 2020 election.” He has been endorsed by QAnon favorite Michael Flynn and Trump acolyte Roger Stone. For some reason, he traveled to Delaware last Friday to give a speech about Joe Biden.

While he has dinged her for such offenses as appearing in a photo with Bill Gates, Evans has occasionally made a succinct case for his primary campaign. “My opponent,” Evans once tweeted, “is a total RINO representing an Ultra MAGA District.”

Evans has also raised real money: over $290,000 in 2023, according to his Federal Election Commission filings. (Miller has raised just over $560,000.)

In a brief interview with the Daily Beast at the House GOP retreat last week, which took place in her district, Miller demonstrated how starkly different she is from her opponent.

"My mama told me not to say anything if I can't say anything nice,” Miller said. “I welcome people challenging me. His lack of experience is a little different to me. I’ve worked very hard the last six years. I represent my district well. I’ve listened to them, I’ve voted conservatively, and it’s been my honor to serve.” (Evans did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.)