There aren’t a lot of adults in the room.
Republicans narrowly took back the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms, but they faced a number of disappointing losses — and it showed. After weathering the worst midterm performance by a party out of power in two decades, the GOP erupted in an all-out fight over the speakership, leaving many to wonder if they were watching the party disintegrate right before their very eyes.
That battle resulted in a bruising victory: It took four grueling days and 15 rounds of voting for Speaker Kevin McCarthy to prevail, leaving many conservatives wondering what it cost the party as a whole. The newly elected leader had done what his previous predecessors like Paul Ryan and John Boehner would not do — grant concessions to the House GOP’s most militant conservative faction — and those agreements are set in stone after they were passed in a new rules package on Tuesday, changing how the chamber will govern for the next two years.
Now, Republican strategists worry that the very public infighting not only exposed a lack of unity but also a lack of leadership within the party. “I frankly think the party right now is rudderless,” says former Donald Trump campaign alum Brian Seitchik, who runs the political consulting firm RDP Strategies.
Up until recently, Trump has been seen as the de facto leader of the party, but strategists believe his influence is starting to wane — a reading that’s supported by both the disappointing performance during the 2021 midterm elections and the protracted battle over the speakership. After all, the former president’s direct appeal for Republicans, specifically members of the House Freedom Caucus, to embrace McCarthy was rejected by some of even his fiercest loyalists, such as representatives Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert. It was not Trump’s insistence but a series of deals that McCarthy made with the two lawmakers and 18 other holdouts that ultimately prompted them to change their tune.
“Overall, the speakership battle shows that Trump’s stance within the Republican party has weakened post-November and continues to,” says Gunner Ramer, a Republican analyst at the political consulting firm Longwell Partners.
As cable news talking heads consistently reminded us, the election of a speaker is supposed to be the easy part of a new Congressional era. So considering it was anything but, we’re taking a closer look at the chaos that’s to come — and where the party and its leadership, including Trump, currently stands.
Is the GOP still the party of Trump?
There’s definitely been a narrative percolating lately that the Trump brand is on a downslide, but is there data to back that up?
Recent polling shows he’s no longer the preferred Republican candidate. According to a USA-Today-Suffolk University poll released last month, 31 percent of GOP and GOP-leaning voters want the former president to run, compared to 61 percent who say they prefer another Republican to carry on his policies.
To put this into perspective, support for Trump’s re-election bid has dropped from 60 percent in October to 47 percent today, which marks an almost even split with the 45 percent who don’t want him to run for a third time.
“Donald Trump is a proven loser — he lost in 2020, and his candidates did very poorly in 2022,” says Ramer. “The signal that should be sent to Republican leaders is this Trump style of politics just isn’t palatable to win in a general election.”
Interestingly enough, the same poll found that many conservative voters already have a candidate in mind: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who boasts 56 percent support. While DeSantis seems like the most popular alternative to Trump, neither strategist we spoke to believes that’s a given, as the Florida Republican hasn’t been tested yet on a national stage.
“There’s a lot of aspiration associated with him, but the rubber has got to hit the road and we’ll have to just see how he performs under that spotlight,” Seitchik tells us.
Who else will step up in the Republican Party?
But before we even think about 2024, the GOP’s leadership vacuum sets up the party for a more pressing test: Republican leaders who are currently governing are already facing a tough year politically.
McCarthy’s speaker role was substantially weakened by the concessions he agreed to, effectively allowing House business to potentially be dictated by a handful of hardliners. In the rules package that was just passed this week, a single Republican can now force a vote on McCarthy’s future as leader of the chamber. Seitchik says he wouldn’t be surprised if fellow House Republicans are already strategizing how they could rise up as the alternative, though he doesn’t see anyone in particular “waiting in the wings.”
Considering McCarthy’s historically weak position, it’s no wonder conservatives are looking to other options to lead them forward, such as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. Former Sen. Judd Gregg, who once served as an adviser to the Kentucky Republican, says McConnell will become the party’s go-to standard-bearer when it comes to negotiations with Democrats over thorny issues like government spending and dealing with the faction of extreme Republicans in the House.
“McConnell becomes the responsible individual on the Republican side who’s going to make the government work,” Gregg told The Hill. “The debt ceiling is just one element of that, but it’s a big one.”
But McConnell also happens to be one of Trump’s biggest enemies. The former president has repeatedly lashed out at the Senate leader, blaming him for everything from unexpected midterm losses to his handling of last year’s $1.7 trillion spending bill. He also most recently blamed McConnell and his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, for the “unnecessary turmoil” surrounding McCarthy’s speakership battle.
Even though Seitchik says Trump’s political clout may not be as strong as it used to be, the reality is the former president still wields enormous power over the newly emboldened House GOP and other fellow conservatives. This could make it difficult for McConnell to avoid any further discord.
What does the speakership fight mean for the 2024 presidential election?
Even though Republicans are eager to put the speakership standoff behind them, some say the negative impacts could have a long tail of consequences. “What could hurt the Republican party is if the American public sees that the Republican party is in chaos,” Ramer says.
Still, Seitchik still has some hope for the party’s future, especially when it comes to uniting against Democrats (For the record, Biden has already stated that it is his “intention” to run again in two years).
“What’s happening right now is a bad look for Republicans, but my hope is that once the presidential campaign really gets underway, Republicans will unify against the Biden and Harris agenda and that will bring us together,” he says.
We’ve got just under two years until the 2024 election — an eternity in politics — and if House Republicans’ dogged determination to investigate President Biden is any indication, they plan to use this time to make a serious impact. It’s too early to know how successful they’ll be, but you can bet we haven’t heard the last about all this bad blood on the Beltway.
