2 factions take aim at GOP lawmakers
Steve Bannon, Kochs marshal rival wings to bring pressure
WASHINGTON — Less than a year after Republicans gained control of Washington with President Donald Trump amid heady promises of action, political pressures from multiple directions are bearing down on House and Senate lawmakers whose stalled agenda threatens to exact a toll heavy enough to endanger their majorities.
The messy dilemma congressional Republicans face was starkly visible at two venues in recent days, where powerful factions within the party vented their anger.
At one — a gathering at a New York hotel of wealthy donors aligned with the conservative Koch brothers — frustrations ran so high over the GOP’s inability to deliver on campaign promises that some warned of a wipe-out in the 2018 midterm elections. Donors suggested that their financial backing for Republican campaigns could dry up if lawmakers fail to make progress, particularly on tax cuts.
At a conservative religious summit in Washington, a similar displeasure was spilling from Steve Bannon as the former White House adviser declared “war” on GOP incumbents who fail to adequately back the president.
All year, the Republican majority in Congress has shown an inability to turn its campaign slogans into laws. Efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act collapsed amid party infighting. Republicans are struggling to draft a promised tax overhaul.
Now Trump has made lawmakers’ jobs even harder by punting to Congress some of the most serious policy questions of his administration — on health care, immigration and foreign policy with Iran — with potentially dire political and practical outcomes if lawmakers do not act.
Many of those issues seem likely to converge in early December, when Congress faces a deadline to pass legislation needed to keep government agencies open.
The party remains deeply split between its establishment class — including billionaires Charles and David Koch, whose groups declined to support Trump for president — and its pro-Trump nationalists, who blame Congress for the president’s inability to enact his agenda.
The Koch groups have promised to spend up to $400 million this election cycle on policy advocacy and political campaigns. Meantime, Bannon has tried to position himself as the leader of the Trump wing of the party and has pledged to back primary challenges aimed at ousting incumbent Republicans who do not share his ideology.
“Right now, it’s a season of war against a GOP establishment,” Bannon said as he paced the stage at the Values Voter Summit.
In the past two weeks, Trump has moved notably to the right — eliminating subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and demanding a long list of immigration policies designed to cut both legal and illegal entries in exchange for legislation protecting from deportation the young immigrants known as Dreamers.
Bannon credits that shift to the power of the populist, nationalist base, citing the Alabama Senate primary victory last month of fiery evangelical Roy Moore over GOP Sen. Luther Strange, the appointed incumbent who both the GOP establishment and Trump backed.
“Every day is like Christmas Day now,” said Bannon. “This is what we always wanted.”
Those moves have brought protests from Republican establishment figures.
“I’m very disappointed in the direction of the Republican Party,” Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.