Feuding factions stall GOP agenda
WASHINGTON — Less than a year after Republicans won the White House and maintained control of Congress, party unity has dissolved into a vitriolic dispute among populist supporters of President Donald Trump, staunch House GOP conservatives, and more traditional Republicans.
The take-no-prisoners ferocity of this intraparty feud is hampering Republicans’ hopes to overhaul the tax code, but also threatens the survival of many GOP candidates in next year’s congressional elections.
In an interview broadcast Sept. 10 on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon charged that the “Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election,” prompting GOP consultant Alex Conant to reply that Bannon is “more interested in destroying the modern Republican Party than winning elections.”
Adding to this combustible mix, Rep. Jim Jordan of Urbana on Fox News Sunday criticized congressional Republican leaders for sending lawmakers home in August rather than staying in Washington to devise an increase in the federal debt ceiling that conservatives could support.
When Trump forged a deal with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a calamitous government default, Jordan and 89 of his conservative allies dismissed pleas from senior administration officials and voted against the agreement.
Even more alarming for arch conservatives, Trump is toying with an agreement with Democrats to protect many young people brought to the United States illegally by their immigrant parents while delaying construction of his much-touted border wall with Mexico.
Some Republicans, faced with primary challenges from ardent Trump supporters, are walking away from their jobs. Seven House Republicans from safe seats are not seeking re-election, and Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona is fending off a primary challenge from a strong Trump backer.
“There has been a pending civil war within the Republican Party that has been building since (President George W.) Bush left office,” said Jeff Sadosky, a Republican strategist in Washington. “And the only thing that held it off was a lack of unified government. Now that Republicans hold the House, Senate and the presidency, the fight looks that much more inevitable.”
The former aide to Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman also noted, “Both sides will be incredibly well-armed and confident they are 100 percent right, but it can’t do anything but hurt the party’s electoral prospects heading into 2018 and 2020.”
By contrast, a Republican official deeply involved in next year’s congressional elections dismissed much of the hysteria as “noise that means absolutely nothing to normal people.”
“The most important (issue) for 2018 is whether Republicans cut taxes or not,” the Republican said. “If they do, 2018 will be good. If they don’t, 2018 will be bad. If we don’t deliver and we have no results, nothing else will matter.”
The result is Republicans have splintered into a three-headed monster that resembles an old Japanese horror movie. Democratic strategist James Manley says “it’s a very toxic environment for Republicans on Capitol Hill. None of these guys trust the president.”
In one corner are the populists who support Trump, sharply object to international trade agreements, are suspicious of foreign entanglements and favor a hard-line stance on immigration, an issue that Bannon said could cost Republicans the House next year.
In another corner are the traditional Republicans who favor a muscular foreign policy and broader free trade, with former House Speaker John Boehner of West Chester criticizing Trump for threatening to scrap a trade agreement with South Korea.
And finally there are Jordan and House GOP conservatives, whom Boehner derisively dismissed last month as “anarchists” who are “for nothing.” They provoked a partial shutdown of the federal government in 2013 in a futile effort to force President Barack Obama to scrap his signature health-care law, known as Obamacare.
“The Republicans have been promising action for years now and are in a position to get things done and they cannot agree,” said Nathan Gonzales, a congressional analyst for the nonpartisan Inside Elections in Washington.
Gonzales said Republicans must deal with a president who he said does not have “a firm ideology.” Gonzales said that with Trump “it’s about deal-making, and that complicates the Republican coalition because he is willing to make deals that don’t match up with the traditional Republican ideology.”
The collapse this summer of congressional Republican efforts to scrap Obamacare and adopt a more marketoriented solution sparked recriminations rarely aired in public. Trump tweeted out sharp criticism of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and all encouraged a primary challenger against Flake, whom Trump described as “weak on borders, crime and a nonfactor” in the Senate.
“The registered Republican voter across the country believes that the Congress and Washington have done almost nothing,” said Barry Bennett, a Republican consultant who served as a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign. “They’re beginning to believe they are incapable of solving these problems. So it’s hardly surprising that it could be a tough election for incumbents.
“It was the Congress which has run up $20 trillion worth of debt, hasn’t solved the immigration problems, hasn’t been able to fix the health-care problem, can’t pass a budget, and it doesn’t take Donald Trump to point that out to voters.”
Yet other Republicans say Trump has no one to blame but himself for the failure of the Obamacare repeal, in part because he seemed to have little grasp of the details of the bills backed by congressional Republicans.
After pushing House Republicans to pass a bill killing Obamacare, he ventured that the bill was “mean.” That led Sadosky to ask, “Remind me? Which one called the health-care bill mean? It was President Trump who provided Democrats with the greatest single talking point to kill the bill.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and McConnell weren’t cowed, and Trump’s attacks may have boosted their support inside their fractured caucuses. When word circulated that Jordan and other conservatives wanted to depose Ryan just as they did with Boehner in 2013, Jordan walked that back on Fox News by insisting that “no one’s talking about changing leadership.”
But few doubt the ugly mood will make it difficult for Republicans to approve sweeping changes in tax laws. Manley says, “You can’t look at what happened over the last eight or nine months and expect them to get tax reform done by the end of the year.
“All of this stuff, including failed efforts to repeal Obamacare, has been a sideshow to the main event, which is to get taxes done.”
— Barry Bennett, Republican consultant and former senior adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign