‘Knock it off’: Speaker Mike Johnson tries to stop Republicans from campaigning against each other in bitter primary battles

USA 18 March, 2024 16:11

House Republicans, who have seen their time in the majority devolve into a seemingly endless series of internal party feuds, now have a new problem: GOP lawmakers targeting other sitting members in their primaries.

In at least four primaries – in South Carolina, Illinois, Texas and Virginia – Republican members are actively campaigning against one of their own, inflaming tensions in a conference where emotions are still raw in the aftermath of Kevin McCarthy’s unprecedented ouster atop the House.

Speaker Mike Johnson has had enough.

“I’ve asked them all to cool it,” Johnson told CNN at the House GOP retreat in West Virginia last week. “I am vehemently opposed to member-on-member action in primaries because it’s not productive. And it causes division for obvious reasons, and we should not be engaging in that.”

“So I’m telling everyone who’s doing that to knock it off,” Johnson added. “And both sides, they’ll say, ‘Well, we didn’t start it, they started it.’”

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz – the Florida firebrand who is spearheading the effort against two of the GOP incumbents, Reps. Mike Bost of Illinois and Tony Gonzales of Texas – is unmoved.

“I would love nothing more than to just go after Democrats,” Gaetz, who led the charge to oust McCarthy, told CNN. “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.”