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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,…
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