GOP Chaos Spotlights Identity Crisis Bedeviling Party Into 2024
(Bloomberg) -- Republicans risk long-term damage to their prospects for retaking the White House in 2024 after Republican lawmakers failed over many days to carry out the typically uneventful process of choosing a House speaker.
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Kevin McCarthy’s torturous bid to lead the GOP exemplifies its dysfunctional state as a party struggling to articulate a core message or put forth a nominee who can appeal to independent, suburban and female voters.
The GOP have long sought to appeal to voters focused on small government, stringent immigration laws and a muscular defense.
As of now, no one knows what this once-disciplined party stands for, or who will lead it. The days-long failure to settle on a speaker brought legislating and rule-making in that chamber to a halt, with the country tuning into usually sparsely-watched public service television to watch a GOP at war with itself.
In the latest dramatic episode on Friday before voting began, McCarthy supporters walked out of the chamber while key dissident Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, criticized the GOP leader. On Thursday, Gaetz nominated former President Donald Trump for the post.
The bedlam was too much even for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who three decades ago sowed the seeds for a disruptive Republican caucus to retake control of the House.
“The GOP is in chaos,” Gingrich said. “At the presidential level, you have an ‘always Trump’ versus ‘Never Trump’ wing. In the Senate, you have members like Mitch McConnell who side with Biden, and the House is in turmoil.”
“We have to try to unify the party,” Gingrich added.
They have about 19 months to right the ship. Republicans are scheduled to gather in Milwaukee in July 2024 to nominate their presidential candidate.
The disarray to start the year exacerbates the pain of a party that failed to capitalize on favorable historical trends in 2022, including President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings and rampant inflation, said Robert Gleason, the former longtime chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania. Republicans achieved only a slim majority in the House, the latest in a disappointing string of GOP election showings going back to 2018.
Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican political strategist who does regular focus groups with voters, characterized the fight for speaker between the “MAGA establishment” — Republicans aligned with Trump and his “Make America Great Again” approach — and “burn it all down” MAGA Republicans who welcome the chaos and are aligned with the party’s anti-establishment wing.
“The gap between what base voters want and what swing voters or moderate voters will tolerate has gotten incredibly wide, and this is the fundamental problem that Republicans face going forward,” Longwell said. “Republicans are increasingly being seen by responsible voters who might otherwise like to vote for sort of the limited government, free-market Republicans as both extreme and incompetent.”
There’s a leadership vacuum within the GOP after Trump’s efforts to be kingmaker in the midterms backfired, said Gleason.
“Donald Trump is not the leader of the Republican Party in the country,” Gleason said. “People who are leaders are winners and they win elections, and they endorse people who win elections.”
Part of preparing for 2024 involves the GOP articulating policy platforms such as ways to fight inflation and crime, control immigration or handle complex foreign policy challenges including the war in Ukraine and the contentious relationship with China. Republicans also need to sort out how to speak about their opposition to abortion, after many independent and suburban voters recoiled from the GOP’s support of abortion bans in all instances.
“It is hard to have a policy discussion when there is so much focus on political dysfunction and the self-harm the Republicans have done,” said Lanhee Chen, the policy director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Trump so far is the only candidate to formally declare. Some polls show Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who’s widely expected to run, beating him, and several GOP candidates are considering White House bids including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and outgoing Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.
Republicans’ historic struggle to elect a speaker dovetails with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Nov. 15 post-mortem of the underwhelming midterms, where he said they gave independent voters an “impression” of a party “involved in chaos, negativity” and “excessive attacks.”
Longwell said her focus groups showed swing voters opposed candidates they considered too extreme, even if they liked Trump and wanted to vote for the GOP. She’s also seeing Trump supporters now looking for alternatives like DeSantis.
But Trump is counting on his base and a crowded GOP field to become only the second president to win another term after losing reelection besides Grover Cleveland. And nearly two years removed from office, he continues to espouse his false stolen 2020 election claims and lobs frequent attacks on other Republicans, like McConnell.
The same tumult plaguing the GOP House caucus is coursing through other regions of the party. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is being opposed in her bid for a fourth term later this month by challengers who are calling for new leadership after the string of poor election cycles.
McDaniel said in a telephone interview that Republicans need to adopt Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment of not speaking ill of any fellow Republican because they have much more in common with each other than Democrats and are only hurting the party’s cause.
“Why are we continuing to stop our agenda by fighting each other?” McDaniel asked.
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